As Africans celebrate the Africa Cup of Nations, AFCON 2023, starting this January, some Premier League club managers will bite their nails over depleted squads.
Premier League clubs will lose players to take part in the Africa Cup of Nations running from January 13 to February 11.
Manchester City could have the upper hand in the Premier League title race as their rivals will be losing key players to the Africa Cup of Nations and Asian Cup.
With only six points separating the top five, managers will be busy drawing up new plans.
Some will likely look into the transfer market to make up for the loss of top players.
Liverpool will have to walk alone as they lose Egyptian Mohamed Salah and Tottenham will have to play without South Korea’s Heung-Min Son as he heads to the Asian Cup in Qatar, but champions Manchester City will not be affected.
Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola will be all smiles as he does not have a single player jetting off to either the AFCON 2023 in Ivory Coast or the Asian Cup in Qatar for the tournaments that start on January 13 and January 12 respectively and run for almost a month.
Leaders Liverpool, who are ahead of Aston Villa by three points after their win over Newcastle on Monday, will be waving goodbye to Mohammed Salah who with 14 goals is the joint-top scorer in the Premier League this season, equal with Erling Haaland.
They will also be missing combative midfielder Wataru Endo who will join up with Japan at the Asian Cup.
Title chasers Aston Villa will only lose Bertrand Traore to Burkina Faso but fourth-placed Arsenal will be harder hit with Mohamed Elneny of Egypt and Takehiro Tomiyasu of Japan both heading off for an unspecified amount of time, depending on the progress of their nations.
Tottenham have been hit by injuries in the last couple of months and now manager Ange Postecoglou will have to adapt to losing captain Son, who has scored 12 league goals, representing South Korea. The north London club also lost midfielder Yves Bissouma to Mali while Pape Sarr, who was injured against Bournemouth on Sunday, is part of Senegal’s team.
Come back boys, West Ham, who are in sixth place, will be hit by the absence of key Ghana midfielder Mohammed Kudus.
Manchester United’s under-pressure manager Erik Ten Hag could do without Andre Onana of Cameroon and Sofyan Amrabat of Morocco as he tries to bounce back from a bad season so far.
The worst hit is Nottingham Forest as they prepare to lose six players for the next few weeks to AFCON, including Ivory Coast trio Serge Aurier, Willy Boly, and Ibrahim Sangare.
Stumbling Brentford will be without midfielders Saman Ghoddos of Iran, Frank Onyeka of Nigeria, and striker Yoane Wissa of DR Congo.
