MANCHESTER CITY'S XI FOR FINAL THREE MATCHES

Pep has three PL games to negotiate before taking on Chelsea in the UCL final on Saturday 29th May.

They are:
Newcastle (A) - Friday 14th May
Brighton (A) - Tuesday 18th May
Everton (H) - Sunday 23rd May

Pep's XI is hard to predict at the best of times, but here we have the conflicting priorities of wanting to give the players who will play in the UCL final enough minutes to maintain match sharpness and not wanting them to get needlessly injured.

So, I'd work off the assumption of who you think Pep will play in the UCL final first and work backwards.

When splitting his XIs' since IB into UCL vs. PL & Cups, we can see that he has played a similar XI against both Dortmund and PSG.

I would be surprised if the XI against Chelsea differs drastically from this, which means I'd highly doubt Gundogan, Foden, KdB, Bernardo, Walker etc., play all three of the remaining PL games.

The question, really, is whether they play one game or two.

Pep has done what he's always done and shared out starts and minutes across his squad in the eleven games since the IB.

Bar Ederson and Dias, no player has started more than three games in a row.

And the players which have started three are those likely to play in UCL final.

So, I'm leaning towards Pep playing a similar XI to his UCL XI against Newcastle to wrap up the league, then heavily rotating against Brighton, before playing a mix of the two against Everton in the final PL game of the season.

Worth noting that EVE is City's home game w/ fans.

Barring any injury news then, my predicted City XI to play Newcastle:

Ederson
Walker
Dias
Stones
Cancelo
Fernandinho
Rodri
Bernardo
Gundogan
Foden
Mahrez

Only question mark is KdB really and whether he is fit or not.

Though, thinking about it some more, there's a good chance Zinchenko starts against Newcastle at LB to allow Cancelo to then cover Walker at RB against Brighton.

So I'd probably swap Cancelo for Zinchenko in my starting XI.