Ghana forward Antoine Semenyo has been ruled out for eight weeks with a knee injury, leaving Manchester City short of alternatives to Erling Haaland. Semenyo limped off in Saturday’s win over Ipswich, a match that also ended with Haaland hobbling off at full time with a foot injury. Haaland is now a doubt for City’s Champions League home game against AEK Athens on Tuesday.
City go into that fixture looking to recover from last Wednesday’s defeat by Paris Saint-Germain. Enzo Maresca has said he will make changes and has previously admitted that Haaland will require resting at some point. Semenyo had been viewed as the natural stand-in up front for City, but with him unavailable Phil Foden and Iliman Ndiaye could be utilised as alternatives.
Maresca acknowledged the difficulty of covering for Haaland. “To replace Erling it’s always difficult but we have some different options; we’ll see tomorrow,” he 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.”
The Ipswich match left Maresca with several injury concerns. Haaland, Semenyo, Mateo Kovacic, Matheus Nunes and Nico O’Reilly all limped away from the win, and all five had featured at the World Cup. Maresca made six changes for the game, reflecting a schedule of seven matches in 21 days in October for City, many of whose players also had international commitments at the start of the month.
Maresca said City are trying to manage the squad as best they can. “We try to manage all the players in the best way, try to keep them fit,” he said. “Even sometimes things happen that you cannot control, like Antoine’s injury. We try to save him, we try to keep him fresh.” Marc Guéhi described a regime dominated by recovery rather than training. “We try and do what we can on the pitch to go through a few things and tactics before the games,” he 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.”