Man City suffer injury blow as youngster is forced off early in Carabao Cup quarter-final clash with Brentford

Bobb experienced a breakthrough debut campaign in the 2023-24 season but suffered a major setback in his development as a player in the subsequent season as he spent the majority of the year sidelined after fracturing his leg. The youngster remained out of action for 200 days and 48 games, before making a comeback to the team in March this year.

On Wednesday, during City's Carabao Cup quarter-final clash against Brentford, Bobb was forced to leave the pitch within the first 20 minutes as Guardiola introduced Phil Foden to replace the Norwegian. The team physio initially tried to stretch Bobb's leg before declaring that he wouldn't be able to continue playing. The 22-year-old was visibly disappointed while exiting the Etihad pitch.

Bobb was considered one of the brightest prospects to have graduated from City's youth system when he made his debut for the senior side in the 2023-24 season. However, constant injuries have only limited his game time at the club, thereby stunting his progress as a player. In the current campaign, the youngster has started in only five league matches and has slowly fallen in the pecking order behind Jeremy Doku. He has clocked only 720 minutes on the pitch and has contributed with just one assist, which came in City's 4-0 win over Wolves in their season opener. 

Despite his limited game time, Guardiola still has Bobb's back as earlier in the season, the Spanish manager said: "I’m so happy he is back. I don’t know how long it is since he played 90 minutes maybe one year but he is so strong, so disciplined in defensive issues, an incredible threat in small spaces. Hopefully, he can be healthy. All I ask of him is to be healthy and strong in his head and I’m pretty sure he is going to help us in that position. He is another quality player from the Academy. In the last decade, it has been unbelievable how many good players this club has created. There is an incredible team helping the Academy and I have a feeling right now in the EDS there are a lot of good players."

The extent of the injury remains unknown, however, Guardiola addressed the issue during his post-match interaction with the press, saying: "He left after 10, 15 minutes. Complained about the muscular region, muscular injury, in the hamstring. So hopefully it's not a big one and he can come back soon."

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Bobb had made it to the Norway squad for the October international break as they faced New Zealand in a friendly match, which ended in a 1-1 draw. The younger winger was far from impressive in the match, despite featuring in the starting line-up. After the game, Norway boss Stale Solbakken told reporters: "He was very poor in the first half, he is lacking everything. He takes too long with the ball, positions himself strangely and doesn’t press well. He’s done that in training and been very good at it. But if you ask Oscar, I think he’ll say that the first half was his weakest performance for the national team. The second half was the next weakest. I’m not wasting any energy on that. He has performed very, very well in almost every game, both further up the pitch and further out. It’s not a concern."

In-form French star Rayan Cherki scored a sublime first-half goal to inspire the Cityzens to a 2-0 win over the Bees on Wednesday. He netted an absolute piledriver from the edge of the box to hand his team a lead. Savinho later doubled the advantage in the second period as Guardiola's side picked up a comfortable victory and reached the last-four of the cup.

They next host West Ham in a crucial home fixture in the Premier League on Saturday and will aim to pick up all three points and maintain the pressure on league leaders Arsenal, who are ahead in the title race by only two points.