The Chilean says picking a competitive team while
trying to keep his players fresh is almost impossible this weekend, and
has warned against 'dangerous' FA Cup scheduling
Pellegrini says he has just 13 players available for the fifth round game at Stamford Bridge, and the City boss is likely to fill his starting line-up with youngsters from the club's Elite Development Squad.
The City boss is also annoyed about the scheduling of the clash, controversially slated for Sunday after police ruled out a Saturday fixture and the BBC had settled upon their programming, and has therefore taken the decision to prioritise next Wednesday's Champions League game against Dynamo Kiev.
Asked about the difficulty in picking a competitive squad while keeping his big names fresh for upcoming games - including next Sunday's League Cup final against Liverpool - he admitted: "Yes, it’s a very big problem. It’s a big problem. Maybe it’s not so big if we can play on Saturday, but as we couldn’t do it, of course for Sunday it’s a major problem.
“Unfortunately at this moment we have just 13 players available to play. We have to play Champions League on Wednesday, so we’ll see what will be the best team we can put on the pitch for the FA Cup, which we should have played on Saturday.
"I think if you want to protect the English team in the Champions League, you should play Saturday. But for different reasons, we couldn’t play that day, so we’ll see on Sunday which is the best team.”
Pellegrini won the Premier League and the League Cup in the 2013-14 season, his first in English football, but missed out on a domestic treble when City were beaten by Wigan Athletic in the FA Cup quarter-finals.
Liverpool had looked favourites to win the title until the final weeks of that campaign but were hauled back by City in dramatic circumstances.
And the Chilean believes that, given the number of games that had already been rescheduled that season, further progress in the FA Cup would have been "dangerous" and made the title run-in considerably tougher for his team.
“For the moment, nobody can do it," he said when asked whether any English club could win all four trophies. "Maybe one day, someone will. If nobody can do it for the moment it's because something is not going right, or you don’t have the squad for four competitions or you have so many games that you don’t have time to play [them all].
"Maybe at some moment in the season you must prioritise one competition, especially in the last months. That’s why it’s so dangerous to postpone for FA Cup in that moment of the season.
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