The Manchester City midfielder Frank Lampard, who has missed four matches with a thigh injury, sat out training on Tuesday prior to the Champions League match against CSKA Moscow on Wednesday.
The 36-year-old has been sidelined since sustaining the injury in City’s 4-1 win over Tottenham on 18 October and missed training along with Aleksandar Kolarov. Manager Manuel Pellegrini later confirmed that the Serbian will be out for a month with a muscle injury.
On Monday Lampard had told the club’s website the injury was not as bad as he thought and he had a chance of making a return.
“I’m not far off selection,” he said. “Fingers crossed, if all goes well over the next couple of days, I’ll be back in contention. I had a small injury in my thigh – an old injury I’d disturbed slightly. It wasn’t as bad as I’d first feared but you have to be very careful with muscle injuries. That was the issue.”
Lampard also said he was amazed at how much he was enjoying life at Manchester City, where is on loan from the MLS club New York City.
He has scored four goals in seven appearances for City, including a late equaliser against his former team Chelsea in September.
“I didn’t know what to expect before I came here but the move has opened my eyes to a fantastic club with fantastic people behind the scenes and I’m just trying to enjoy every minute. “It’s a great opportunity – not many at 36 get the chance to come and play for a club like City. I love the training, living up here, the people at the club, the staff and the fans.
“When I left Chelsea, I thought I was going to be moving out of the Premier League and that was a different angle. That’s all to come still but this is an absolutely brilliant time for me. I want to look back on it and say I enjoyed it – but more than that, I want to look back and say I made a bit of a difference in a positive way.”
Lampard is contracted to City until the end of December but there have been some rumours he could stay at the Etihad for the remainder of the season.
He would not be drawn on that, saying: “All I can say is how much I’m enjoying it at City. I’m contracted here until the end of December and my future will be at New York City at some stage. All I can do now is go week by week and play as well as I can when I am playing to bring a good contribution. What I will say is: for every minute I am here, I’ll give it everything and we’ll see how it goes.”