Pep has to 'take care' of City superstar Haaland
Pep Guardiola took off Erling Haaland against Slovan Bratislava to "take care" of Manchester City's superstar striker.
Haaland scored in the 58th minute to make it 3-0 to City in Slovakia.
He was taken off two minutes later, to be replaced by James McAtee, who went on to score his first City goal and round off a 4-0 Champions League rout.
With focus switching back to the Premier League, and Saturday's clash with Fulham, Guardiola explained the substitution was made to protect the striker, who has already netted 10 goals in England's top flight this season.
Asked if Haaland had been frustrated to be taken off, Guardiola told City's media channels: "Erling is never disappointed with his manager.
"As a manager I am more secure and more happy when Erling is on the pitch.
"I will keep him on the pitch all the time but at 0-3 the game was almost over and with this amount of games we have to take care of him.
"He had a big knock in the last game against Newcastle [United] so that's why, after the fantastic goal with the pass from Rico [Lewis], it was better [to take him off]."
There was a moment of drama during Fulham's 1-0 win over Nottingham Forest last week, after Raul Jimenez took a penalty off the club's designated taker Andreas Pereira.
Jimenez went on to score the penalty, but Marco Silva was not happy.
"It's clearly the fault of Raul. It is not going to happen again," he said. "Has Raul apologised? Yes. He had to because he knows the rules and how important discipline is in our squad."
City is unbeaten in its last 29 Premier League games (W23 D6), and if it avoids defeat in this match it will equal its longest run without defeat in its league history (30 games between April 2017 and January 2018).
