The coach was impressed with how some of his fringe players performed as City beat Brentford 2-0 on Wednesday (17.12.25) to progress to the last four and knows how important they will be as City battle in four competitions.

Guardiola said: "We changed Rico (Lewis), (Abdukodir) Khusanov, Nathan (Ake), Divine (Mukasa), these players that didn’t play much recently performed really well.

"We have a good result, we struggled in the first 10-15 minutes to take the game but after that came the two actions with Savinho and Oscar in behind. I am really pleased with the impact from the guys who came off the bench.

"In the second half, Rayan Cherki didn’t do the job he has to do defensively, he didn’t have the energy to do it, Savinho neither, that is why we needed the impact from Josko (Gvardiol), Matheus (Nunes) and Bernardo (Silva) helped us a lot to increase our rhythm."

City will play nine matches over the course of a busy January and Guardiola has called for all of his players to be ready.

The Spanish manager said: "We have had a run of a lot of games and Ruben (Dias) and the others have to be ready. After (West Ham) we have seven days before Nottingham (Forest), then five days until Sunderland and then a crazy schedule.

"Everybody has to be connected. The guys that stay on the bench have to be connected and they proved it. Matheus was so connected, Bernardo is always there, when Josko (Gvardiol) arrived he was incredibly committed."