Manchester City forward Antoine Semenyo facing up to eight weeks out

Manchester City forward Antoine Semenyo is expected to miss up to eight weeks because of a leg injury, manager Enzo Maresca has confirmed.

The Ghana international sustained the problem during City’s 3-2 victory at Ipswich last week, a result which maintained their perfect start to the Premier League season with seven wins from seven matches.

Semenyo has undergone a scan, which Maresca said produced more encouraging results than initially feared.

“The rest are more or less all OK,” Maresca said. “The only one that will be out for probably eight weeks is Antoine.”

City face AEK Athens in the Champions League at the Etihad Stadium on Tuesday, with Maresca also providing updates on Erling Haaland, Mateo Kovacic, Matheus Nunes and Nico O’Reilly.

Haaland was seen limping after the final whistle against Ipswich, but Maresca said the striker could be involved against AEK. The manager added that Haaland had looked better during training on Monday.

“He can be available, we will see, we have a (training) session now,” Maresca said. “We have some doubts after Sunday’s game. He was quite good yesterday, better. So we will see today.”

Maresca acknowledged that losing Semenyo was a setback but said City had alternatives if they needed to change their approach in attack.

“First of all to lose Antonine or any player for us, it is not good,” he said.

“Then in terms of Erling, we said that we can use Antoine as a nine but also we have different players that we are going to try and find new solutions.

“We will see, again. At the moment it is Erling, why do we need to think about a different nine when Erling is there?

“Then, if something happens and we need a different plan or a different nine, we will see.”

Maresca has become the first manager to win his opening seven Premier League matches at a new club. City’s strong start, however, has come while the club faces more than 100 charges of breaching financial rules in the English top flight. City deny all the allegations, while Maresca has repeatedly said he “trusts the club completely”.

City were beaten 4-2 by holders Paris Saint-Germain in their previous Champions League match, but Maresca said he would not attempt to shield players from potential injury risks against AEK.

“It is a huge game, tomorrow for us,” the Italian said.

“It is a Champions League game, unfortunately we lost the last one, we need to win games and we are going to try to win the game with our best players at this moment.”