MANCHESTER -- Manchester City boss Manuel Pellegrini has said he hopes David Silva is only a week away from returning to first-team football.
The 2010 World Cup winner has missed City's last five games with ligament damage in his knee -- after being injured in a League Cup game against Newcastle -- and will sit out Sunday's trip to Southampton and Wednesday's visit to Sunderland.
But Pellegrini revealed that Silva, who had struggled to kick the ball because of pain in his leg, might be in contention to feature against Everton next Saturday.
"He's just starting," the Chilean said in a news conference. "We hope that next week he could be 100 percent, at least kicking the ball with normality and we will see if he can be the squad."
Meanwhile, Pellegrini is delaying a decision whether to venture into the January transfer market.
City's squad was depleted when striker Alvaro Negredo joined Valencia in the summer and, while there are restrictions on what they could spend because they failed UEFA's Financial Fair Play test, their manager has some leeway.
Pellegrini added: "I will think about in a few weeks more because in this moment if I say yes we cannot do nothing. Maybe we are not scoring too many goals and then everyone thinks that we need more players."
The 61-year-old called on his side to play with a greater focus in a bid to stop conceding goals after they let in two while beating Bayern Munich on Tuesday.
He said: "[We have] to have more concentration, to have more trust with the ball near our box. We need to improve in that sense because in the last three games in the Champions League, we have conceded two goals each game and it's very difficult to win.
"Also in the Premier League but for different reasons, [when City conceded twice] we draw one [at QPR], won the other won against Hull. We are working on that, the same way we are working to score more goals, working to be a good team."
But Pellegrini believes reports of their struggles are exaggerated, explaining: "We are not in a very bad moment. We have the team that takes the most shots in the whole Premier League."