Manchester City are monitoring Erling Haaland 24 hours a day in an effort to keep the Norwegian fit for the season run-in.
City are still in the hunt for the Premier League, Champions League and FA Cup and Pep Guardiola is so desperate to have Haaland available that he says the 45-goal striker is being wrapped in cotton wool.
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“We take care of him 24 hours, we have incredible doctors and physios, they are behind him every second of the day,” Guardiola told a news conference on Friday.
“It’s difficult to understand why you spend a lot of money [on players] and then leave them — I don’t know what the other clubs do.
“Today with this demanding schedule of games every three or four days we have to take care of them.
“Sometimes they cannot train more than 10 or 15 minutes. People say why was he [Haaland] subbed against Leipzig when he’d scored all the goals but then he was injured after the Burnley game and cannot play with us against Liverpool.”
“He works so much time inside the training centre, much more than on the pitch. Today in modern football, players train more behind the scenes than on the pitch.”