Villa striker Christian Benteke 'could return for Man City visit'

The striker limped off in Saturday's 1-0 win over Norwich and is likely to miss tomorrow's League Cup clash with Tottenham.

Replacement Libor Kozak scored the winner just 90 seconds after coming on to end Villa's run of three straight Premier League defeats.

Benteke is joined on the sidelines by Ashley Westwood, who missed the Carrow Road success, and Gabby Agbonlahor, who suffered an ankle injury in Norfolk.

But Lambert is hopeful five-goal top scorer Benteke could return for Saturday's visit of Manchester City.

He said: "It looks like his hip flexor at the moment. The good thing with Christian is he's usually a quick healer. I don't know how long, we'll have to just wait and see.

"It's hard to answer that because I don't know how bad it is.

"Obviously we've got a game on Tuesday but the most important one is the following one on Saturday.

"Westy hurt himself in training. He's just got a little strain. He's been brilliant for us. To lose him was a blow. He was one and there were a few knocks, but we had to get them out there.

"(Antonio) Luna just trained on Friday so he was touch and go, obviously (Jores) Okore's out, Gabby's hurt his ankle, Fabian (Delph) has been struggling so the lads were running on empty. We've played a lot of games in a short period of time."

And, ahead of another busy week, Lambert admitted he may need to patch up his squad.

He said: "Very much so. There might be one or two. The main one is the following Saturday. We'll do our best to try to get through the Tottenham tie, but it's a massive sign next Saturday.

"I've never questioned their commitment to us to the football club to themselves and to their team-mates. That was really pleasing, because I knew there were one or two knocks there.

Gabby only trained the later part of the week, so did Luna, two big players for us and they wanted to give it a go."