Erling Haaland and Antoine Semenyo injury updates issued by Enzo Maresca

Manchester City boss Enzo Maresca has given the latest team news ahead of his team’s Champions League clash with AEK Athens on Tuesday night.

The Premier League leaders kept up their perfect start to the domestic campaign by beating Ipswich Town 3-2 on Saturday.

Haaland scored twice after Phil Foden netted their first goal as Maresca’s men made it seven wins from seven Premier League outings.

There was cause for concern at the end of the match, though, with Haaland limping away from the pitch at the Etihad.

There were more serious worries for Antoine Semenyo, who has suffered a knee injury, and Maresca has confirmed that the winger will be out for the next two months.

On Haaland, the manager told a pre-match press conference: ‘He can be available, we’ll see, we have a session now. We have some doubts after the game. We’ll see, he was quite good yesterday, better, but we’ll see today.’

Asked on Semenyo and other injury doubts around Nico O’Reilly and Mateo Kovacic, he said: ‘The rest are more or less all okay, the only one that will be out for probably eight weeks is Antoine.’

The boss added: ‘In the first moment we expected an even worse injury, we were more worried, but after yesterday’s scan we feel much better.

‘It will be eight weeks, so in this moment the most important thing for him is recovery and when he is back, probably around December, we have a new player in terms of energy. To lose Antoine, or any player, for us is not good.’

With Haaland not entirely fit, it was suggested to Maresca that the home game with AEK Athens could be a good opportunity to rest him, but the Italian suggested otherwise.

‘It’s a huge game tomorrow for us,’ he said. ‘It’s a Champions League game, unfortunately we lost the last one [against PSG], so we need to win games and we are going to try to win the game with our best players in this moment.

‘For sure to replace Erling is always difficult but we have some different options and we’ll see tomorrow. Depends on the game plan a little bit, but also there is a chance he can be available tomorrow, we’ll see.’

If the prolific Norwegian is not available, Manchester City do not have an obvious like-for-like replacement but Maresca sounds unfazed.

‘We have different players that we are going to try and find new solutions,’ said the manager. ‘We’ll see, at the moment it’s Erling, so why we need to think about a different nine when Erling is there? If something happens and we need a different plan or different nine, we’ll see.

‘Phil [Foden] can be one of the solutions, he’s played in the past in that position. But at the moment the number nine is Erling.’

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