Manuel Pellegrini faces an FA Cup selection dilemma at Norwich on Saturday as he attempts to keep Manchester City on track in four competitions.
Pellegrini has indicated the FA Cup is bottom of his priority list in the midst of a testing January schedule that consists of a minimum of seven matches, and potentially as many as nine.
City’s manager has even gone as far as to suggest that his side will struggle to find time to play all of their fixtures if they reach the finals of all three cup competitions.
A run in the Champions League is a genuine prospect thanks to a kind draw, while Pellegrini’s team can reach Wembley in the League Cup by overturning a 2-1 semifinal first-leg deficit against Everton at the end of this month.
With the focus on those two competitions in addition to a Premier League challenge, Pellegrini will give some consideration to squad rotation as his team travel to Norwich for Saturday’s FA Cup third-round tie.
In the Chilean’s mind, winning a quadruple of the Champions League, the Premier League and England’s two major cup competitions is impossible.
“It’s a lot of games. If you ask me, I always prefer to play in all the competitions,” Pellegrini said.
“But I am worried about the FA Cup, because after the early rounds, you start having to postpone your Premier League games to continue in the tournament.
“I am not sure if you can continue in all the competitions. I think if you play in the semifinal of the FA Cup and you are in the semifinal of the Champions League, then you don’t have time to play all of your Premier League games.”
While the fixture schedulers would surely find time to squeeze in all of City’s games somewhere, Pellegrini’s point is that pushing for success on four fronts is bound to result in a failure somewhere along the line.
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