Manchester City manager Enzo Maresca spoke about Jeremy Doku and Nico O’Reilly as neither travelled to Portugal
Enzo Maresca could welcome back Nico O’Reilly for the Manchester derby but Jeremy Doku is likely to miss out again. O’Reilly pulled out of the warmup for Manchester City’s win over Coventry at the weekend while Doku was injured in the Community Shield.
Neither trained on Monday before City jetted off to Porto without them for the start of their Champions League campaign against Porto. O’Reilly’s injury was said not to be serious, and the manager was optimistic that he may be available for Sunday’s game with United.
The diagnosis is less positive on Doku, even if Maresca did say he is ‘back’. The Belgium international was only expected to be out for a couple of weeks but looks set to miss at least the first five matches of the season.
“He is back. I don’t know if he can be available for the weekend [vs Manchester United], but slowly, slowly he is back,” said Maresca.
City start another Champions League as one of the favourites for the competition, and expectations have been raised further with a club record spend of nearly £430m this summer. Maresca is not leaning into those but knows that they are there as City enter a big week with a tough Champions League game and then the derby at Old Trafford.
“I said many times when you are Manchester City the expectations are always higher,” he said. “I like more to be focused on the day by day, it is very complicated to think where we could be in February, March, April. For me the most important thing is to see that we are improving game after game and then we will see.”






























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