Pep Guardiola has not yet decided if Erling Haaland will face Liverpool but is confident Manchester City can continue to score without him.
Erling Haaland is still recovering from his groin injury, with Pep Guardiola saying a final decision on his fitness for this weekend would be made later on Friday.
Haaland enjoyed a stunning first season at Manchester City, scoring 42 goals in all competitions – comfortably the most of any player in Europe’s top five leagues.
However, his momentum was hampered by an injury before the national team break, which prevented the attacker from establishing a connection with Norway.
City face a huge game against Liverpool on Saturday and will be hoping Haaland returns, although Guardiola was eager to take his time.
“Erling is recovering,” the manager said. “We have one last training session and we’ll see how he feels.”
Guardiola, who added that Phil Foden will be out for “two or three weeks” following an appendectomy, was asked if he would risk Haaland unless he was convinced he was fully fit.
The City boss was happy to trust the 22-year-old’s judgement, but is also confident his side could cope without their superstar forward.
In the Premier League, Haaland has scored 28 goals, accounting for 42 percent of City’s total this term, and collected 20 points. All three are high marks for a City player in a single season.
“The doctors and especially the players will decide,” said Guardiola. “How is he feeling? I spoke to him yesterday and he’s feeling fine. But we’ll see, we’ll see what happens.”
“We’ve scored a lot of goals this season and he’s scored an incredible amount of goals, but we’ve also scored a lot of goals in the past.
“Since we’ve been here and with Roberto Mancini and [Manuel] Pellegrini, Man City have always been a team that has scored a lot of goals in a season – with different players, different strikers.
“They scored a lot of goals, which we will try to do until the end of the season.”
City have scored the second most goals in all of Europe in all competitions this season, their 109 behind Bayern Munich’s 112. They are the only two teams to reach three figures.
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