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Erling Haaland (Image: (Kate McShane/Getty Images))
Erling Haaland did not train with Manchester City on Monday to spark concerns about an injury he picked up in the Premier League win over Ipswich. The striker limped off at full-time on Saturday and now looks likely to miss out against AEK Athens in the Champions League.
Enzo Maresca had downplayed concerns about Haaland, insisting that he remained front and centre of his thinking as to who should lead the team rather than discussing alternatives. But the absence of the Norwegian from training less than two days after hobbling out of the Etihad makes him a doubt to play at Aston Villa on Saturday - unless he features against AEK.
Mateo Kovacic, Matheus Nunes and Nico O'Reilly also missed training after they were all substituted with knocks against Ipswich. Antoine Semenyo was missing and will be out for eight weeks with a knee issue, although even the Ghana international has staff relieved that his injury is not as bad as it was first feared.
"[Erling] can be available. We will see. We have a session now. We have some doubts after Saturday's game. He was quite good yesterday, better," Maresca said. "The rest are more or less okay.
"The only one that will be out for probably eight weeks is Antoine. In the first moment we expect an even worse injury so we were more worried but after the scan we are less worried. It could be eight weeks. Now the most important thing is to recover it. When he is back, around December, we have a new player. It's not muscular."
Youngsters Kaden Braithwaite, Floyd Samba and Ryan McAidoo joined the session on Monday ahead of the Champions League clash with AEK.
CITY SQUAD: Foden, Cherki, Reis, Anderson, Khusanov, F Samba, McAidoo, Braithwaite, Bouaddi, Rulli, Donnarumma, Lewis, Bettinelli, Gvardiol, Guehi, Dias, Ait-Nouri, Doku, Fernandez, Ndiaye,