Pep Guardiola said some of his injured Manchester City players could return against Leyton Orient.

City have been short of options for most of the campaign, with at least four players injured for each of the last 30 games and 86 per cent of the team's games all season. Six stars missed the 5-1 mauling at Arsenal, with Ederson joining Oscar Bobb, Rodri, Ruben Dias, Nathan Ake and Jeremy Doku on the injury list after the goalkeeper picked up a minor problem.

However, all but Rodri were in training on Thursday as the team began preparations for their FA Cup game at Leyton Orient and Real Madrid to raise hopes that City's injury crisis could be coming to an end. Guardiola did not go into details about who could come back, but teased that some players could make their return against Leyton Orient.

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"Tomorrow after the game, we will come back here to Manchester and have time to start to think," he said. "I had an eye against Madrid but Leyton deserve my attention, otherwise we don't get the amount of semi-finals and finals that we made.

City beat Salford 8-0 in the last round of the FA Cup and will be looking to maintain their strong record in the competition. As well as winning the competition in 2019 and 2023, they reached the semi-finals in 2020, 2021, and 2022 and the final in 2024.

The Blues kick off at 12.15pm on Saturday before making their way back to the Etihad ahead of the first leg of their Champions League play-off on Tuesday night.