The powerful Norwegian surprised the Emirates supporters while heading towards the bench after 76 minutes of play, complaining of strong back pain. Guardiola had no choice but to replace his star player, panicing a few days before a new series of endless matches.
A cup match that arrives too early for City
City travels to Huddersfield on Wednesday in Carabao Cup, but the 25 -year -old should miss this match. Guardiola admitted that the mid -week match would be too early, but suggested a glimmer of hope for the return of Haaland for the first League match on Saturday against Burnley to Etihad.
Guardiola remains optimistic for Haaland
Sharing news from Haaland, Guardiola said on Tuesday: ” He recovered yesterday (Monday), he has not trained and I have not yet seen him, nor the other players today. I hope he can play this weekend. The week was very demanding, especially the last match, and the players sometimes have problems. I think he will be fine for the weekend. I hope so.”
Guardiola aligned the same starting eleven for the matches against Manchester United, Naples and Arsenal, but this consistency is about to break up. Catalan confirmed that it would make a significant rotation to Huddersfield, Haaland being far from the only big name to take his time.
“It will not be the same starting eleven as in the last three games”, added Guardiola. The only problem for the Carabao Cup is that we respect this competition, but we get there without injury, when we have it. We will have to play with players from the training center, because the priority is Burnley, Monaco and Brentford. It would have been perfect for (Rayan) Cherki, (Rayan) Ait-Nouri, Omar (Marmoush), but many players cannot play because of injuries. We will try to compete and qualify.
