PEP Guardiola insisted he was powerless to prevent Cole Palmer leaving Manchester City last summer and said Chelsea’s star attacker is “an exceptional player”.
Ahead of the FA Cup semi-final against Chelsea at Wembley tomorrow, Guardiola was asked about City’s sanctioning of 21-year-old Palmer’s £40million move to Stamford Bridge.
Palmer has scored 20 Premier League goals this season, joint-top of the scoring charts with City striker Erling Haaland.
Manchester-born Palmer also made his England debut this season.
Palmer scored two goals for City before he left for Chelsea, in their Community Shield defeat to Arsenal and European Super cup win over Sevilla.
“He’s an exceptional player, we knew when he was here,” Guardiola said in his pre-match press conference before the game against Mauricio Pochettino’s side. “He’s a nice guy, a shy guy, with a lot of confidence, and he’s playing fantastically well.
“But he was asking for two seasons to leave. I said, ‘no, stay’. But he still said, ‘no, I want to leave’. What can I say?”
City could have done with Palmer in their Champions League quarter-final second leg against Real Madrid on Wednesday night. City had chances as they drew 1-1 before going out 4-3 on penalties.
Haaland went off after 90 minutes and goal-scorer Kevin De Bruyne in the second half of extra-time.
Guardiola said: “Kevin seems well. Erling felt something, a muscular issue.
“Kevin felt exhausted, so tired, after five months out injured [at the start of the season], so that’s normal. We’ll see more tomorrow.”
Guardiola added: “It’s normal [for the players to be tired], with the amount of games we’ve played this season and in the previous seasons. There’s not much time for recovery, we played extra-time and the intensity we play, we are not machines, the fatigue is there.”
City saw their double-treble chances ended by Carlo Ancelotti’s side.
“We don’t have an option, we can’t feel sorry for ourselves,” Guardiola said.
“We don’t have time to reflect, we’ll do that in the summertime.
“You compete to win, but sometimes you lose games, and that’s what happened.”
