Pep Guardiola played down the idea of using many academy players in the Carabao Cup despite being without six first-team stars.

City are still in the dark over Kevin De Bruyne's fitness, with Guardiola admitting that it is taking longer than he thought for the Belgian to come back. With the player still feeling pain to kick a ball, there is still no date for his return.

"I would like to tell you, I especially would like to know it, but I don't know," he said. "He feels better to train but to go to the level we need for competition when you kick the ball or something he still has pain. Kevin has to feel good to express the huge talent that he has.

"He's feeling better but not the best. If these guys doesn't come back as quick as possible we will struggle because we cannot sustain for with just 14 or 15 players so we need the players to come back but it is what it is. Hopefully that can happen after the international break."

Guardiola had talked about playing youngsters in the cup to ease the workload on his depleted first team squad. The City manager admitted that he needs to have one eye on Bournemouth and other games on the horizon, but isn't sure about how fair it would be to throw untested academy players into such a testing environment with Spurs out to change their mood.

"There is some ones but we play against Spurs, they're coming from defeat and I know what it is mentally for managers and players playing against City - the last four Premier League in a row winners. I know they will be the best," he said.

"We also won the Carabao Cup four in a row and I always used the first rounds to play guys who didn't play regularly and when we arrived in the semi-finals we thought we were going to win it. Now we have a problem that we have a lot of injured players and I cannot rotate like I would and I don't want to put much pressure on the young players on this stage for this opponents for the way I play so that's why I have to make a mix for the players, split minutes with 45 minutes-45minutes.

"We will arrive [back] at 3am Wednesday night and Friday we have to travel to Bournemouth, who are out of the Carabao Cup. It's a really intense game with how good they are and that's why I have to think about it with one eye on that. After, we travel to Lisbon and the recovery will be so difficult this time. We have to take a look at how the players come back in training, how fresh they are, and try to minimise mistakes in selection."