Manchester City take on Palermo on Saturday but Rodri is not with the squad as he recovers from an injury setback suffered at the Club World Cup
Pep Guardiola confirmed Manchester City will not see a fit Rodri until after the September international break after he suffered a setback at the Club World Cup.
The Spaniard came on against Al Hilal in the last-16 but suffered a groin problem in what Guardiola described as a ‘big injury’.
As reported by the Manchester Evening News this week, Rodri has mostly been doing individual work since the players returned to the City Football Academy last week.
He has taken part in the last two sessions but was not included in the squad to travel to Palermo for a friendly this weekend and will not be ready to play 90 minutes against Wolves.
City’s manager still has hope that the Ballon d’Or winner can feature against Wolves, Spurs and Brighton but does not expect to see anything like the best version of Rodri until after the international break. Until then, it is about protecting him rather than exposing him.
“Rodri is getting better but he had a big injury in the last game against Al Hilal. He has trained better in the last few days, hopefully after the international break is when he will be really fit,” he said.
“Hopefully in these games he can play some minutes but what is important is he doesn’t have pain because we don’t want this Rodri coming back injured.
“We try desperately to avoid that. He has been training the last two sessions with us and that’s good.”
Rodri is one of four players have been left at home so as not to take any risks with their fitness. Phil Foden, Josko Gvardiol and Claudio Echeverri are all not fully fit as well.
Foden and Gvardiol will be looking to start at Wolves, although Echeverri’s future is still unknown amid loan interest and too many non-homegrown players for City to register in their Champions League squad. Guardiola said that Foden has a knock, but did not rule him out of the Wolves game with a week to recover.
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