Town chief won't be predicting who Guardiola will pick as duo could return for City

Luton boss Rob Edwards won’t be wasting any time trying to second guess the side that Manchester City boss Pep Guardiola could select for their FA Cup fifth round tie at Kenilworth Road this evening.

The visitors could well have England midfielder Jack Grealish fit after the £100m signing has featured just four times since the turn of the year, only playing 21 minutes of the Champions League 3-1 win at Copenhagen on February 13 before going off. Meanwhile, Croatian defender Josko Gvardiol might also be fit as well having not been in action since the 3-1 victory at Brentford on February 5.

Speaking to the press, when asked about Grealish’s recovery from his muscle injury, Guardiola simply said yesterday: “Good.” Meanwhile, going into the chances of Gvardiol’s potential return from his ankle problem, he continued: “He’s good too. I don’t know (if he will play). He’s training without much pain. Still he didn’t train with us but he’s on the verge to come back. Training this afternoon but I think everybody’s fine.”

When Luton came up against the Premier League, Champions League and FA Cup champions, plus the FIFA Club World Cup winners, earlier in the season, the visitors didn’t have either Erling Haaland or Kevin De Bruyne in their ranks. Both are back and playing once more, but on whether he has planned for them being on the pitch tonight, Edwards said: “We don’t try and predict the team, it doesn’t matter who comes in for them, they’re top international footballers who are world class.

"Whoever Pep selects, I think Jack was on the bench against Bournemouth, so whether he’s available now, he could be, but whoever he puts in are going to be top, top players, so we can try and have a little bit of an idea about who he might change and who might come out. He’s spoken openly about protecting one or two and managing them. They’ve got huge games themselves after ours, so I expect there to be a few changes, but whoever comes in will be pretty good.

“I think everyone knows City’s players pretty well anyway, almost all of their games are on the TV and everyone knows them. We have played against them as well, but we’ll do all the work on them as we do for every single game anyway, and try to provide the players with the right amount of information going into it. I think it’s good as there’ll be some different stuff to the first game now, so I’m really looking forward to it."

Having been run close by the Hatters before the turn of the year, Luton going ahead through Elijah Adebayo’s header before second half strikes from Bernardo Silva and Grealish saw City take the points, Guardiola knows the Hatters represent a difficult challenge this evening. He added: “They have the courage to play, face the challenge without any fear, and after it’s not just that.

“They play direct into channels, they have ability to build up the patterns and are so clear. They play really, really good with the football. Quite similar to Bournemouth for the way they play but it’s Premier League and the FA Cup and I would not expect different from my experience these years I have been in England.”