City won´t be signing new defenders in January – Guardiola

Pep Guardiola has no plans to strengthen his Manchester City defence in January, the Spanish manager happy with his options.

After a solid start to life under Guardiola, City have not keep a clean sheet in eight matches in all competitions.

Vincent Kompany, Pablo Zabaleta and Bacary Sagna are all battling fitness issues, while new signing John Stones has learnt some tough lessons at centre-back.

But Guardiola – desperate to arrest a six-match winless streak – is not seeking defensive reinforcements in the New Year, telling reporters: “I’m not thinking about that.

“When Pablo Zabaleta and Bacary [Sagna] come back, we know how good was Pablo Maffeo in that position, when Vincent [Kompany] can come back and regularly 90 minutes, we have many, many options.”

“I think we are defending quite well. I don’t know how many we received in set-pieces, I don’t know how many times they win the duels in the boxes, about free kicks,” Guardiola added.

“I remember maybe in Glasgow we didn’t cover the diagonals well but in the end I think, for example, United are stronger, taller than us with [Zlatan] Ibrahimovic, [Paul] Pogba, [Marcus] Rashford, many, many players, and we defend quite well.

“I would like clean sheets but I think the set-pieces are part of the game, you can win you can lose, but there are many, many other aspects I am concerned about.”

City, top of the table on goal difference, are away to West Brom on Saturday.