With Tottenham and Leicester hit by outbreaks, Manchester City have issued guidelines to their players to try to avoid problems over the festive period.

Manchester City have cancelled their staff Christmas party and issued guidelines to their players in a bid to avoid a Covid crisis.

The Blues usually throw a big city centre bash for all of their personnel, but for the second year running it has had to be called off due to the worsening pandemic situation.

Last year City were hit by an outbreak at Christmas time that saw the postponement of their scheduled December clash with Everton, and the loss of five players for their away game at Chelsea a few days later.

The Premier League has already been hit this year, with an outbreak at Tottenham forcing the call-off of their game with Brighton at the weekend.

And Leicester have vowed to carry on with their game against Newcastle despite losing seven players to positive tests this week.

The league has moved to implement tighter measures around the clubs, with Covid passports needed for admission to matches from next week, and rules around access to players and coaching staff being tightened already.

Guardiola said that the City players have been briefed on the need to be extra careful, and that the festive club get-together has already been sacrificed.

“They know (the players). The club speaks with them, have to be careful,” said Guardiola. “Being at home as much as possible, go out in masks if you feel that you can get Covid. The chance is you won’t get it. It’s still there and there are setbacks, you have to protect. You have to be careful.

“Why should it be different to the rest of society? The rest of the people like to go to restaurants and we are not exceptions. We have a job with 50,000 people (in the stadium) and we’re still in a dangerous situation.”

On the party, Guardiola said the decision has already been taken to call it off, but said that there has been no move to control what the players do in their own homes, other than giving tyhem guidance: “I think the situation is different.

“The club every winter has a party for all the workers and we cancelled it, we cannot do it. but if family and kids do it, be careful, today we have LFT and PCR (tests) and you can do it differently.

“Just be careful and that’s it – the risk is high. Look at Tottenham and Leicester. It can happen here too. It’s a big problem for them, the family and the team.”