Pep Talk: “The most important thing is we are fighting for everything, three things...”

Pep Guardiola had his pre match presser as he debriefed the media on juries, Pool match, tactics and much more!

Let’s dive right in:

Pep on injuries

“Erling is recovering,” the boss said in his pre-match press conference. “This afternoon is the last training session then we’ll see how he feels.

“We will see today. Again, the doctors and especially the player will decide how does he feel.

“Yesterday I spoke with him and he feels good. But we will see.

“Life is risk in these stages. You have to take it. We score a lot of goals this season. He scored an incredible amount of goals. But in the past always we scored a lot of goals.”

“Phil had surgery,” Pep added. “The doctors tell me two or three weeks. So we will see how his development after appendix surgery.”

Pep on quality/tactics

“Football is the quality of the players,” Guardiola told the press in his pre-match media briefing.

“When you play with the typical players that you need, the tactics are the skills of every player.

“Haaland has his skills. Julian has his own skills. He gives us one thing, [someone else] gives another one.

“[If we] play with a False 9, it is another skill. It depends.

“We saw the people come back yesterday from the international break. We could not do much.

“We will see today the last assessment and then we will decide.”

Pep on Pool match/sustanability

“The reality is the next game otherwise [winning trophies] cannot happen. I say many times, one team won the treble - Champions League, Premier League, FA Cup because it’s so difficult.

“We have this game, a long week and then a tough schedule with many games. The most important thing is we are fighting for everything, three things, that is so awesome, so good.

“Winning is good but to sustain for 10/11 months is so difficult. Still we are there. In Premier League, there are teams far away but we will see next games.”

“When we are one or two months to the end of season, being mentally tired this does not exist,” he said.

“Everyone knows if we win the game we are still alive. If we lose the game we will be out. That can happen in November. It can happen in December. It can happen in January. Or it can happen right now in April.

“But it’s good, it means we have done many, many good things in the good position. But when we arrive in the end, the semi-final of FA Cup, the Premier League, the situation we are in in the Champions League against Bayern Munich, you win we are alive, we continue. If not, au revoir and next season we will be back.”

Really good stuff as we await a huge match vs a top side.