Pep Guardiola delivers promising Erling Haaland injury update ahead of Tottenham clash | OneFootball

Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola predicted that Erling Haaland will be back from his knee injury "soon" and remains hopeful that the club's talismanic striker could feature against Tottenham Hotspur on Wednesday.

Haaland has been sidelined for City's last two fixtures. After watching his teammates get torn apart by Real Madrid in the Champions League last week as an unused substitute, Haaland didn't even make the squad for City's demoralising 2-0 defeat at home to Liverpool on Sunday.

The burly Norwegian has been nursing a knee injury he sustained during a rare convincing victory for his side as he landed awkwardly against Newcastle United on 15 February.

City's bright start against Liverpool soon fizzled out as a mobile frontline spearheaded by Phil Foden in a false nine role failed to find a way past Alisson. After a dispiriting reverse - the club's eighth league defeat of the campaign, as many as they recorded in the previous two seasons combined - Guardiola was quizzed about the status of his star striker.

The Catalan coach revealed that the injury is "not dangerous", a welcome relief for fans. "All the examinations dictate that it's fine, but he didn't feel fine," Guardiola continued.

Erling Haaland has sat out Man City's last two defeats / Alex Pantling/GettyImages

"I have the feeling it [Haaland's return] will be soon, because yesterday we trained and [he] made some really good movements. But he said he was not ready, and we have to respect that. Hopefully in the next games he can help us."

City travel to the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on Wednesday night, a bogey ground at which Guardiola has lost six of his eight visits. When asked if Haaland would be available for that upcoming trip, he said: "Hopefully."

"Obviously, we will miss him," Guardiola added. "During the last nine years, we played a lot of games without really important players and we survived. This season we have had a lot of injuries but we could not survive."

Throughout his two-and-a-half seasons at Manchester City, Haaland has only sat out 26 matches across all competitions. Most of those have been against lower league opposition in domestic cups, which helps explains why City have still won more than 73% of the games Haaland has missed.

However, they desperately struggled to lay a glove on Madrid in midweek and, once Arne Slot instructed Ryan Gravenberch to man-mark the roaming Foden, City's threat was almost entirely snuffed out once again.

Spurs have not been bastions of defensive fortitude this season, but they are enjoying the longest current winning streak across the entire division, with three consecutive Premier League victories under their belt ahead of City's midweek visit.