Manchester City head into Saturday\u2019s early Premier League fixture at Aston Villa with Erling Haaland confirmed as fully fit. Enzo Maresca said the striker is \u201c100%\u201d available, easing some of the uncertainty around a team still monitoring a few injury concerns.<\/p>\n
Maresca said the status of Nico O\u2019Reilly, Matheus Nunes and Mateo Kova\u010di\u0107 remains unresolved. \u201cThe injured players] can all be available or not in terms of still doubt,\u201d Maresca revealed. \u201cYesterday, they were all improving, and we\u2019ll see this afternoon.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor sure, Erling is the only one 100% available.\u201d<\/p>\n
That is a timely boost for a forward who has made an immediate impact this season. Haaland has scored eight goals in seven Premier League appearances and is three clear of Alexander Isak and Jo\u00e3o Pedro at this stage of the campaign. A fourth Golden Boot, which would match Thierry Henry and Mohamed Salah, is already within reach.<\/p>\n
City\u2019s recent setback came with the news that winger Antoine Semenyo will miss two months through injury. His absence means Maresca has already had to shuffle his attacking options. In the AEK Athens match, Allan was used on the wing and 17-year-old Floyd Samba started in Haaland\u2019s place, while Phil Foden produced the standout display with a hat-trick and an assist for Rayan Cherki.<\/p>\n
Maresca described Cherki as \u201cone of the best players in Europe\u201d when he is at his best.<\/p>\n
Villa now offer a sterner examination for a City side chasing an eighth straight win to begin the new Premier League season. J\u00e9r\u00e9my Doku is expected to come in on the wing against Unai Emery\u2019s team, who will also be aware of the challenge of containing Haaland. Few sides, though, have a record against the Norway international as strong as Villa\u2019s.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Haaland is fit, but City still face injury doubts before their Premier League trip to Villa.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21902,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[711,238],"tags":[1836,242,180],"class_list":["post-21903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aston-villa","category-manchester-city","tag-2026-27-premier-league","tag-injury","tag-player-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21903"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21903\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}