Pep Guardiola admits that Manchester City could look to sign another full-back in January, which suggests that pursuing Alexis Sanchez might no longer be a priority.

Pep admits that City might have to look at signing another full-back in January if Benjamin Mendy’s knee injury is serious.

“We will see in January,” the Spaniard said regarding signing a full-back.

“We thought about next summer, about looking for another left back. We have Danilo, Delph and (Oleksandr) Zinchenko can play there, so we will see as we go along.

“I am very happy with Delph’s performance tonight. Midfield players can play everywhere. He’s a nice guy who has no complaints.”

Mendy, who City signed from Monaco for a reported £52m in July, has suffered what some journalists are speculating could be an anterior cruciate ligament injury. The 23-year-old was subbed off in the 29th minute of City’s 5-0 win over Crystal Palace at the weekend and has since allegedly been flown to Barcelona to see specialist doctor Ramon Cugat.

https://twitter.com/benmendy23/status/913001955202617345

While the France international has shot down claims that anterior cruciate ligament damage is definitely the case since he doesn’t know how serious it is himself, if it is, City may need to look for a new full-back as the typical healing time of an ACL injury is six to nine months.

Even though Pep was impressed by Fabian Delph’s performance against Shakhtar Donetsk in the Champions League on Tuesday night, Mendy has been a solid player for City so far this season and not having him in the squad will be a loss.

Although Pep was reportedly rather keen on bringing Alexis on board over the summer (so keen City waited until the final day of the transfer window to actually lodge a sensible £60m bid), the Sky Blues might have to hold off on making another bid in January if they want to prioritise strengthening their defence.

Of course, they could just wait until next June and they’ll get him for free.