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FA Cup favorite Manchester City will be hoping its clash with League Two side Salford City is straightforward at the Etihad Stadium this weekend. There will be some cup shocks but Pep Guardiola’s men surely won’t suffer one of them.
Facing Salford not only means something of a local derby, but it also pits Manchester City against the group of former Manchester United players who now own the club. Gary Neville, Phil Neville, Nicky Butt, Ryan Giggs and Paul Scholes are all co-owners and have been involved since 2014.
The match will be shown live on BBC One in the UK. It will be streamed live on the BBC iPlayer too. In the US, the FA Cup rights are with ESPN where you can watch live and stream live on ESPN+.
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Guardiola will be without Rodri (torn ACL), John Stones (foot), Ederson (undisclosed), Ruben Dias (muscular) and Oscar Bobb (leg). James McAtee, Matheus Nunes, Nico O’Reilly and Jahmai Simpson-Pusey could be among those who start the game.
“I’ve lived in Salford for the last eight years, so I will be playing against my neighborhood, my home town,” Guardiola said during his press conference on Friday. “I have a lot of respect for the manager [Karl Robinson]. We played years ago at Oxford and when he was assistant to Sam Allardyce at Leeds.
“The last six games, six clean sheets and six victories so I have huge respect for them and what they do, the intensity and we will take it seriously like we always have done. Hopefully, we can do a good game and make it three wins in a row — it’s a long time since it happened.”