\n<\/p>\n
The last time Foden started against a \u2018Big Six\u2019 opponent was in the derby at Manchester United in January, when he was taken off at half-time for Rayan Cherki. The France international has since usurped Foden as City\u2019s main attacking midfielder over the last few months, but Guardiola opted to start them together at Wembley. It didn\u2019t work, with Foden repeatedly getting in Cherki\u2019s way and looking stunted while the \u00a334 million summer signing dictated City\u2019s play, albeit with limited success.<\/span><\/p>\n Cherki was seen as the replacement for Kevin De Bruyne when he arrived from Lyon, but he appears to have taken Foden\u2019s place as well. When Guardiola was asked about Foden slipping out of the starting XI earlier this month, he directly compared him to the French maverick, and made it clear that time waits for no one in this ultra-competitive City team, not even their favourite son from Stockport.<\/span><\/p>\n “Cherki has been amazing. Phil plays in more or less that position and has to challenge with Rayan,” Guardiola said. “There\u2019s the Wayne Rooneys and this type of player who have been 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 years all the time incredible over an 11-month season. The rest, sometimes (a dip in form) happens. They don\u2019t have to be worried, but they have to take it as a challenge. <\/span><\/p>\n “All the titles we have won, Phil was there and he\u2019s been important in that. But it happens, (you have to think) ‘Okay, I have to challenge my team-mates who came from abroad and want to prove themselves in the Premier League and make a name for themselves’.”<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The last time Foden started against a \u2018Big Six\u2019 opponent was in the derby at…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1632,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1631"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1631\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}