Antoine Semenyo has been ruled out for eight weeks with a knee injury, leaving Enzo Maresca short of alternatives to Erling Haaland, who is a doubt for Manchester City’s Champions League game at home to AEK Athens on Tuesday. Semenyo limped off against Ipswich on Saturday and Haaland hobbled off at full time with a foot injury. City are eager to get their European campaign back on track after losing to Paris Saint-Germain last Wednesday.
Maresca has said he will make changes and has previously admitted Haaland will require resting at some point. Semenyo would have been the most obvious replacement but Phil Foden and Iliman Ndiaye could be utilised. Then in terms of Erling, we said that we can use Antoine as a 9 but also we have different players that we are going to try and to find new solutions.” Maresca witnessed a number of his players limp away from the win over Ipswich: Haaland, Semenyo, Mateo Kovacic, Matheus Nunes and Nico O’Reilly, who all featured at the World Cup.
Maresca had made six changes, showing the need to rotate amid a hectic schedule of seven games in 21 days in October for City, many of whose players also had international commitments at the start of the month. We try to save him, we try to keep him fresh.” The fixtures mean it is difficult for Maresca to get training time as he tries to instil his style. It’s been enjoyable, to be honest; not to train, just playing games, which is fun.”
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