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Manchester City manager Enzo Maresca gestures during the Premier League match between Manchester City and Sunderland at the Etihad Stadium in Manchester, on September 20, 2026. (Photo by Mike Morese/MI News/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Manchester City manager Enzo Maresca
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Seven days after a Manchester City side down to ten men kept Manchester United at bay without much trouble, they crumbled again and again up against a Sunderland attack that will feel like they should have scored more than three. Enzo Maresca's team scored five on the day and also could have had many more so they were ultimately happy, but it has been difficult for anybody to work out what the new era at City is going to look like on the pitch.
Maresca was selected as a continuity candidate, sharing the same love for possession football that Pep Guardiola had as well as forensic detail with exploiting the weaknesses of opponents. Fans of Leicester and Chelsea would dispute any notion that Maresca's football is entertaining, yet there has been plenty to get City fans off their feet in the opening seven games.
Too much, according to Maresca. He said after the Sunderland thriller that he would rather win 1-0 than 5-3, and that feels like one of the most significant pieces of information for how City will look. This is a manager who wants control above everything else, and that means keeping the opponent away from your box as much as possible rather than waving them through at every opportunity.
Given it is still early days for the manager at his new club, it is fair to say that they are far from the perfect vision of the team that Maresca envisages. There is a new way to press for the team and for the defence specifically, those players have been working on a specific set of instructions that goes against what they had been taught for the last ten years.
If some teething problems are expected, it's also fair to say that City leaned into the nature of the Sunderland match rather than trying to fight it. Ruben Dias trying to make everything physical with Brian Brobbey didn't seem the smartest play, yet Antoine Semenyo chose to accelerate rather than put his foot on the ball as the game evolved.
"Sometimes it is going to be like that, not every game you can control, and especially with a physical team like Sunderland, you just have to ride the waves," he said. "There were so many duels in the second half, much more than the first half. So, yeah, I think we just had to ride the wave. I think we rode it.
"We knew if we get our chances, we would score. But again, I think the duels were the most important thing. We needed to win them because they won a lot of their duels in the previous games and obviously ended up scoring. So we needed to do that today. We conceded a few as well, but again, ultimately it's all about winning."
Semenyo is one of a number of City signings in recent years that is better suited to the modern Premier League game where duels are so prevalent, and another of Maresca's key ideas is to have as many players in his team that can force 1vs1 situations with their opponents and beat their man as often as possible. That would tilt City away from as much control as they could have given the risks involved in losing the ball for duels, and his wish for more crosses in for Erling Haaland adds into that.
The City manager has shown in the last two weeks that he will stay open-minded on his attack. Having brought on Iliman Ndiaye in the Manchester derby for the second half to make sure City knew they had options up front despite their one-man deficit, he added Jeremy Doku into the chaos of the Sunderland game. The Belgian almost immediately created the biggest City chance of the game for Nico O'Reilly, and then played the key pass for Josko Gvardiol that brought City's fifth goal.
City can't be as chaotic as they were against Sunderland if they want to go far in every competition, which means the performances against Porto and United have to be seen as more of a blueprint for what Maresca wants. There are certainly plenty of Chelsea fans - as well as a few Chelsea supporters - who are pleading for it to become less entertaining for neutrals.
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But at the same time, Maresca clearly intends to have a riskier approach than he could do even in staying true to his possession style. A good manager adapts to the players he has available, and City have plenty in their squad who can both react to game situations but are also extremely comfortable with the ball at their feet and space in front of them.
As long as that remains the case, it may be months before the team gets towards where Maresca wants them to be - but that will not stop them picking up results along the way, as they have already shown.
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