Pep Guardiola hits out as Man City slapped with Premier League sanctions

Manchester City have copped it financially from the Premier League after racking up a massive £3million in fines for delaying kick-offs over the past two seasons. Pep Guardiola's team talks have seen his side hit with quite the bill and the City boss has accepted "rules are rules".

The Catalan coach saw one half-time team talk delay a restart by two minutes and 24 seconds last season. The cumulative breaches eventually saw City land a £1m fine at the end of the campaign.

That was a slight improvement on the season before, where the club were hit by a £2.09m fine for committing 22 delays. The Premier League states that keeping games on time "helps to ensure the organisation of the competition is set at the highest possible professional standard."

And Guardiola ensured the club avoided another fine by holding his press conference early on Friday. Previewing City's clash with Newcastle could have seen the club forking out more cash if he had hosted the meeting with journalists at 2pm, following training.

The Premier League prefers press conferences to be underway by 1.30pm on a Friday before games. City have already pushed that with two recent 2pm starts.

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City staff informed Guardiola that another fine for the club or himself would be forthcoming if he continued to push the boundaries. The former Barcelona and Bayern Munich boss lamented the double standards in place over timekeeping.

“We are training later and if we train at 12 until 1.30, I cannot be here [at the press conference] in time,” Guardiola said. “The Premier League don’t allow me at 2pm. The club said if I don’t start by 2pm they will fine me or fine the club.

“We paid a lot of money as I’m late at half-time, but when we played in the Champions League final they had a show before the game and they are always late. They have to fine the singers! That is why I decided 9am and the journalists have had their breakfast and will need to take a coffee.

“Sometimes I arrive one minute later but the rules are the rules. The Premier League is impeccable for that.”

City almost have a full complement of players ahead of the clash against Newcastle. Guardiola confirmed that midfielders Rodri and Mateo Kovacic were missing.

"Everybody is fit except Kova and Rodri," he said. "Rodri is making good steps, it's almost three weeks since he made the last little step back.

"He knows that we have to take real time to recover fine, recover well, mentally and especially physically from the problems he had, to be consistent from now on until the end."