Pep Guardiola has rubbished suggestions that Manchester City have rejected the chance to sign Paris St Germain superstar Neymar.
Reports in France claim that City were offered the Brazilian forward - but knocked back PSG’s offer to bring him to the Premier League. But Guardiola believes he all bases covered when it comes to scoring goals after adding Erling Haaland and Julian Alvarez to a squad that won the title with 99 goals last season.
And the City boss said: “I’m sorry but it’s not true. The information is not right. Neymar is an incredible player and the info I have is that he’s an incredibly nice guy. But it’s not right. Every summer Manchester City are going to buy 150 players.”
City will step up their pre-season preparations by facing Mexican side Club America at the magnificent 72,000-capacity NRG Stadium.
And Guardiola is angry that Phil Foden, John Stones and Ilkay Gundogan have wrecked his plans to make sure the champions hit the ground running when the new campaign kicks off after being denied entry to the United States because they don’t have a covid passport.
Guardiola was hoping for a full-strength squad, but the trio have been forced to prepare with the club’s youth team in Croatia after failing to be immunised fully.
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He said: “Yes, it’s disappointing. I would like them to be here. In our second season, when we ended up with 100 points, that was the only season when we were all together.
“Since then it’s always been four players arriving and then a week later another one. We start seasons with incredible problems and every year we drop points. This season I thought that maybe we will be all together, but due to the personal situation of these players we aren’t.
“But it is what it is. We are going to move forward and we have to adapt. Pre-season can sometimes be three, four, five weeks but now it’s over after one week. But they (the three players) are fit. They are training with the Under-23s and they’ll come back and join us and they’ll be fine.”
