Gareth Southgate told Manchester City's Treble winners that he is always watching them, as he confirmed that they won't start for England on Friday following their weekend of partying.
City completed the Treble by winning the Champions League on Saturday, prompting three nights of wild partying - including a private jet to spend one night in Ibiza before returning to Manchester for a rain-soaked parade. Jack Grealish's antics have been on the front pages of newspapers, and he admitted on stage at the Rreble parade that he had barely slept over the previous three days.
Along with Kalvin Phillips, John Stones, Phil Foden and Kyle Walker, Grealish joined the England camp on Tuesday to prepare for two Euro 2024 qualifiers, starting at Malta on Friday night.
And Southgate has confirmed that the City contingent are not in consideration to start the fixture, sending a warning about their parties over the weekend.
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“There is a line. I'm always monitoring everything the players do wherever they are, at whatever stage of the season," he said.
“But anything like that I would do privately so I don’t think that would serve any purpose me discussing that publicly, really.
“A few of our players would be teetotal. What is different is that everyone posts everything. I wouldn’t have liked a few of my nights out to be posted publicly. My generation would have been in a lot more problems.
“I have spoken with the players. We have talked about where the focus needs to be, where we need them to be and acknowledged what they have experienced and that’s for me to manage.”
Regarding their availability against Malta, Southgate confirmed that the City quintet may still feature off the bench, and will be fully available for Monday's fixture against North Macedonia at Old Trafford.
“We weren’t considering those boys to start this game. We were hopeful they could play some part and that is still the case," he explained.
“But with the tactical preparation that we knew we needed to do earlier in the week, we always knew they were going to report Tuesday night, Wednesday was going to be light and Thursday the usual light session. So unless we had a problem we were not aiming to put those players into this game.”
Southgate had previously said of his City players: "I’ve spoken with them when they arrived, firstly to say what an incredible achievement and also huge congratulations to the whole club and Pep [Guardiola].
“We said 'look, we're heading into the unknown here’. There’s no way of knowing individually how they’re going to react and respond to what they’ve been through…huge emotion, celebration, the need to get back into training and the group. They’re all available for tomorrow but I’ve yet to decide whether that’s a good decision. We have strength in depth in a lot of those positions as well.”
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