Erling Haaland is “there” while he recovers from an ankle injury, although the journey from Saturday to Goodison Park to Everton will come too early for the Talisman of Manchester City.
Haaland was excluded for a period of five and seven weeks after he continued on his ankle during the second half of the FA Cup Quarte final victory of the city in Bournemouth.
City has since taken seven points from three Premier League matches and defeated Leicester City with 2-0 and Crystal Palace with 5-2 on both sides of a boring aimed draw with Manchester United.
On Wednesday, Haaland posted a short video on his Instagram story and left him in the Joggen gym. At the end of the video Haaland turned to the camera and said, “I get there”.
Van Haaland is expected to miss at least four games, with a FA Cup semi -final against Nottingham Forest, as well as competition matches against Everton, Aston Villa and Wolves, to come in the next 16 days.
In the absence of Haaland, Omar Marmoush played as a central striker in last week's victory at Palace and scored the second goal of his team when they recovered from 2-0 to win comfortably.
Marmoush has scored six goals in his first 10 Premier League performances for City, with 15 shots on goal in this time, seven more than all his teammates.
Only five players have once set more goals in their first 10 games for the club, while in the Pep Guardiola era, only Haaland (15) and Gabriel Jesus (seven) have done that.
“The numbers are really good,” Guardiola said about the start of Marmoush. “He arrived in the middle of the season and at a time when we are not good.
“Sometimes when you come when everything is fluent and everything is fine, it is easy to adjust. But coming when the team is not playing well, that is a great honor.”
The opponents of Saturday Everton meanwhile defeated Forest 1-0 last time to pull around 17 points from the relegation zone with six more games.
They have never seen problems there, since David Moyes returned as a manager in January, and James Tarkowski believes that last week's performance was their best of the season.
“It was probably our best, real. Forest is a team that flew here, on a really long unbeaten run. They had an incredible season,” said Tarkowski.
“Every now and then we are in a good place, we can look forward to these last six games to put even more points on the board and see where we are ready.”
Players to watch
Everton – Abdoulaye Doucoure
Doucoure scored three goals in his last eight Premier League performances for Everton, after he had only scored one in his previous 36.
This season he is on average more shots per 90 minutes under Moyes (1.6) and more accents in the opposition box per 90 (3.3) than when he played for Sean Dyche (0.7 shots, 1.5 touches in the opponent's box).
Manchester City – Kevin De Bruyne
De Bruyne has had a hand in six goals in his last six Premier League start (one goal, five assists).
The Belgian has scored and helped both in 28 games for City, with only Mohamed Salah for Liverpool (41), Wayne Rooney for Manchester United (35) and Thierry Henry for Arsenal (32) that this does more often for a single club.
Match Prediction – Manchester City Win
Everton is Winless in their last 15 Premier League matches against City (D3 L12) since a 4-0 win in January 2017 under Ronald Koeman.
City attracted 1-1 with Everton in the reverse match in December, but they do not have both meetings with the Toffees in one competition campaign since 2016-17 (D1 L1).
Since the return of Moyes as Everton Manager on January 15, only Liverpool and Arsenal (each) have lost less Premier League matches than the Toffees (two), who took 21 points this season in his 13 games (W5 D6).
In this game, however, City goes as favorites after their big win last week.
The five goals of City against Palace brought them to 102 goals in all competitions in 2024-25, a 12th consecutive season in which they scored 100 or more goals, the longest run of every top side of the top in history.
Moyes is Winless in his last 15 Premier League meetings with City (D2 L13), and with the visitors who have a greater need for points, that run could continue.
Opta wins probability
Everton – 27.1%
Manchester City – 47.8%
Drawing – 25.1%
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