Taylor Harwood-Bellis will miss Manchester City's FA Youth Cup tie with Fulham on Thursday with a hamstring injury.
U18s coach Gareth Taylor confirmed the news ahead of the fifth round tie at the Academy Stadium, as City look to reach the Youth Cup final for the second year running.
Harwood-Bellis has not played since limping out of the previous round victory over Aston Villa last month.
The 18-year-old later tweeted: "Nothing serious on the injury, just tightness." However, Taylor has now revealed Harwood-Bellis is still injured, along with some of his academy teammates.
"There’s a couple of injuries in the U18 group and a couple in the U23s so as a combined group we’ve got a bit of a mixture," the coach told MEN Sport.
"We’ve been missing Taylor Bellis, he played in the previous round but he’s got a hamstring injury so he’s not going to make the game. So again it gives other people opportunity and hopefully we can progress and have another crack at it."
Taylor offered no timescale on how long Harwood-Bellis will be out, saying City would take his recovery game-by-game.
"I couldn’t tell you, he’s obviously got a bit of an issue there," he said. "It was always going to be a doubt when we realised this game, he was always going to be doubtful."
Harwood-Bellis has featured four times for the senior team this season, scoring his first goal for City in the FA Cup third round win over Port Vale last month.
