More competitive adverts for the Champions League’s group phase are available – a night when thousands of blue seats remained strikingly vacant - but Phil Foden won’t mind that.

While all eyes are on how Manchester City replace Erling Haaland in the eventuality of a more pressing injury than the knock from the weekend, Foden made his point around who fills in for Antoine Semenyo.

Semenyo will miss the next two months with a knee problem and it will be a fight between Foden and Iliman Ndiaye as to who makes that spot their own. Foden’s hat-trick with AEK Athens in town after notching against Ipswich Town four days earlier do his chances no harm. His first two goals were products of super link up with Rico Lewis, the pair in sync in one-touch blurs of movement, and Foden slamming high into the net with a purpose not always seen recently.

And after appearing generally more buoyant at the weekend, Foden is playing with a little more fizz – the sort he found early on last season before his form nosedived – and just looks more confident.

It is only a start at the moment and Semenyo’s absence should provide a greater chance to build upon that.

‘I consider Phil one of the best English players,’ Enzo Maresca said. ‘For different reasons in the last two or three years, he was not good enough. But I know how good he is. So we are just trying to help him; we are sure that he's going to help us this season.’

City were already leading once Foden first found the net, Elliot Anderson mopping up the rebound once Enzo Fernandez’s free kick had kissed the bar and bounced back.

The free kick had been won by European debutant Floyd Samba, a 17-year-old who became their second-youngest Champions League starter in the Champions League. Son of former Blackburn Rovers defender Chris, the academy graduate scored twice in the Carabao Cup against Norwich City last month in an unfamiliar centre forward role and was called to perform similar on Tuesday.

Samba’s tenacity in tracking back saw him barge Kervin Arriaga out of possession and off he charged towards goal, bouncing off challenges until finally felled 20 yards out. Seconds later, Anderson had his first goal since a £116million summer move.

Rayan Cherki’s sumptuous drag back produced the third, the Frenchman placing into the far corner, after AEK briefly threatened to make a fist of the evening when Stavros Pilios drove across Gianluigi Donnarumma.

Some of the City movement showcased further signs of their improvement under Maresca, and the Cherki clipped pass for Lewis to lay-off for Foden’s to finish first time in netting City’s fourth provided the best example of that. Yet eyes continued to cast up towards the stands. Whatever the reason, it almost felt as if there were more inflatable bananas inside this stadium on Saturday than there were supporters for this continental tie.

The Etihad Stadium and City fans are often dealt a bad rap for attendances but the sparsity was certainly stark. Unusually stark, the new Pep Guardiola Stand yawning three weeks since the guilty verdicts dropped and the appeal lodged.

This will be back to being a full house for their next Premier League assignment, against Brighton a week on Saturday, although it will be intriguing to see how many show up when Napoli arrive at the end of November. The potential to watch Kevin De Bruyne again might skew that somewhat.

The Etihad was only really half-full, a similar crowd to that Norwich game in fact, and those absent missed the Foden show.

That was complete 14 minutes from time when he raced away into the corner having secured a hat-trick, his fourth for the club. A gaping net, timing a run to meet the cross of another European debutant, Ryan McAidoo. Maybe that month off following the red card at Old Trafford did him good.