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 against 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 against Paris Saint-Germain last Wednesday. Maresca has said he will make changes and has admitted previously that Haaland will require resting at some point. Semenyo would have been the most obvious replacement but Phil Foden and Iliman Ndiaye could be utilised.
"To replace Erling it's always difficult but we have some different options; we'll see tomorrow," Maresca said. "To lose Antoine or any player for us is not good. 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 against 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 manage all the players in the best way, try to keep them fit," Maresca said. "Even sometimes things happen that you cannot control, like Antoine's injury. 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. "We try and do what we can on the pitch to go through a few things and tactics before the games," the defender Marc Guéhi said. "It's just a lot of recovery, sleep, to make sure the body is right for the next game,. It's been enjoyable, to be honest; not to train, just playing games, which is fun."
Guéhi was among the players who opted not to take a knee at the weekend as part of the Premier League's "No Room For Racism" campaign. "I haven't been taking the knee for a while now," he said. "I'd always clap just because of what that actually signifies." He wants greater action to combat racism in sport. "I hope we can do a bit more but we will just see. Hopefully the message is still getting out there, which is important."
