Man City plane redirected ahead of West Ham clash

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First-team flight is sent to an alternative airport after flying to London on the eve of Premier League encounter

Manchester City's flight to London had to be rerouted after a technical issue on the plane meant that they could not land at their scheduled destination.

The first-team squad flew to the capital on Friday ahead of City's lunchtime Premier League clash with West Ham United.

But their flight had to redirected from City Airport to London Stansted more than 30 miles away.

Goal understands that there was a problem with the plane's anti-skid system which meant that it could not land at an airport with a short runway.

The team suffered a slight delay ahead of travelling to the hotel before Saturday's clash.

It is understood that there was no fault on the part of the airport but the flight would not have needed to be rerouted had it been scheduled to land at a major airport.

In 2016, a City team flight came off the runway during take-off from Norwich.

City travelled without injured players Gabriel Jesus, Fernandinho and Benjamin Mendy.

Kevin De Bruyne and Aymeric Laporte returned to training on Thursday and Pep Guardiola was remaining tight-lipped about whether they would be fit to return to face the Hammers.

“Some of them will be [involved],” he said at his pre-match press conference. “Some of them, no. You will know tomorrow.”

A victory could move City up to third in the Premier League and above Liverpool having played the same number of games.

City have won on every visit to the London Stadium, scoring 22 goals and conceding just once.

But Guardiola is expecting a tough game against a side buoyed by their comeback against Tottenham when they snatched a 3-3 draw after conceding three times in the opening 20 minutes.

“The past is the past, we have good results,” the City boss said. “What we saw against Tottenham, always West Ham have quality players. They play really well against Tottenham, not just the last minutes, even at 3-0 down they play with a lot of personality.

“They are in good form. Definitely, they are in a good moment.”

City have two more away games after their trip to West Ham, playing Marseille in the Champions League on Tuesday night followed by Sheffield United on Saturday.

“The schedule is completely crazy for everyone, especially the teams that play in Europe," Guardiola said.

“Right now I don’t know my selection. We play tomorrow at 12.30, so not much recovery. Today the guys trained really well and tonight we will decide.”

2020-10-23 23:00:06

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