Yes, Man City’s football will be different under Maresca – but they urgently need a midfield makeover

As far as season curtain-raisers go, Manchester City left a lot to be desired in their sorry defeat to Arsenal in the Community Shield.

“We knew already before the game the things we need to do,” Enzo Maresca said afterwards, when asked if the manner of the defeat highlighted the need for signings. “We have it quite clear what we need to do, and for sure we are going to do something before the transfer window closes.”

City have entrusted Maresca with continuing Pep Guardiola’s work in Manchester, and they entered the summer with the full intention of backing the Italian in the transfer market. But with a fortnight left of the window, there is a sense that things have not gone to plan so far, and the manner of their 3-0 loss to Arsenal in Cardiff will inevitably lead to questions.

City’s three pre-season games in Asia suggested that Maresca will bring Guardiola football but sped up, with fast passing between the lines and a succession of dribbles from talented wide players. Sunday suggested stilted build-up play, an uncertain midfield and only sporadic opportunities for the wide men to get involved.

Antoine Semenyo and team-mates underwhelmed in the Welsh capital (MB Media/Getty Images)

They will probably end up somewhere in the middle, with the hope at City being that there is far more of the former. The biggest problem they have right now is that the squad is far from complete, and that many of their biggest difference-makers only returned from their post-World Cup holidays on Wednesday.

Facing a settled side such as Arsenal brutally exposed those facts, and the additional complicating factor is that Guardiola was so successful, and set such high standards, that it is difficult to work out exactly what we should be comparing City to.

“In general, I am always concerned — even when we win games. So imagine it now that we did not win the game,” Maresca said with half a smile post-match when asked about how easily City conceded their goals. “But it’s just the beginning; we have many things that we need to do better.”

“The first two goals we conceded, I didn’t like,” he added. “The first one because it was after 25 seconds; the second one, I think there was no pressure on the ball. I don’t know if it’s for physical condition; we had more players at the World Cup. I don’t know the reason why, but the first two goals that we conceded, I don’t like.

“In terms of things that I like, I think after the first goal we conceded, the reaction was very good, at this level… when you concede a goal and you are able to react the way we react, then it’s good, but after the second goal I think it was more complicated.”

City players react to Arsenal taking the lead after 23 seconds (Ian Cook – CameraSport via Getty Images)

There was a period between Arsenal’s first two goals (scored by Riccardo Calafiori and Kai Havertz) where City looked somewhat settled and created some openings, although that was largely after 25 minutes. Before that, there were plenty of passes around the back, and while they were not always flustered, they were hardly incisive.

For the first two goals, Abdukodir Khusanov, Ruben Dias and Gianluigi Donnarumma were all poor, and the third goal somehow looked even worse for City, with Martin Odegaard strolling through the penalty area.

It has never been wise to make sweeping judgments on the Community Shield — anybody who remembers Erling Haaland’s goalless debut in 2022 will know that — and while it is tempting to believe that everything will go wrong without Guardiola at the tiller, it would be foolish to overlook the fact that the Maresca era is about three weeks old, and half the midfield is missing.

As much as there was plenty to be encouraged by in Hong Kong and South Korea, there are some obvious concerns. Some of them go back further than pre-season, to Maresca’s time at Chelsea.

One regards the build-up. So far we have seen that City are going to rely on several set patterns for getting the ball out from the goalkeeper, and they will use Maresca’s trusted 3-2 shape, made up of three defenders behind two midfielders.

Under Guardiola, there was an ever-evolving set of solutions that could be executed by players such as Bernardo Silva, Rodri and Ilkay Gundogan, who were good enough to interpret things on the fly.

Things are different now, and that is an inevitability of losing top players who have been at the club for years, and the finest manager of his generation. The worry is that by coaching certain patterns when City are trying to build out from the back, opposition coaches will be able to come up with a plan to stop them.

City obviously have work to do in the transfer market, with Rodri and Tijjani Reijnders set to move on, after Bernardo left at the end of last season. Ayyoub Bouaddi is still expected to come in, and is best suited to replicate the Rodri role, but at 18 years old he simply cannot be expected to do everything the Spaniard does.

Enzo Fernandez is a player who has split the City fanbase, not just in terms of his ability but also in terms of the controversy following his singing of a racist song in 2024. Maresca wants him, but he is not seen as a Rodri replacement — the idea is that he would play further forward — and even if there are concerns about his contributions off the ball, he does certainly have fight in him, and that is a trait that City need.

It would be unwise to ignore Fernandez’s defensive deficiencies considering the extra need to win a duel and track a runner in this ultra-physical Premier League. That is also important because Maresca is, so far, asking his wingers to press the opposition centre-backs, which means the midfield needs to be ready for battle if the opposition move the ball past the first line of the press. They were too lightweight on Sunday in that regard.

Could Fernandez add the necessary bite to City’s midfield? (Shaun Botterill/Getty Images)

City are building a team for these kinds of individual battles, and it means that the football is likely to be a lot more rough and ready than under Guardiola, but that would have been the case, even if to a lesser extent, had the Catalan remained in charge.

With players who are better suited to beating a man rather than passing a team to death, that is necessarily going to affect the type of football they play. As much as there are players whose weaknesses could be isolated, there are plenty who appear to fit Maresca’s system like a glove — Nico O’Reilly, for example, could be a major attacking weapon from left-back.

The game was up for City at 3-0, but there were flashes of Elliot Anderson’s ability on his debut, not least his desire to look for an early ball in behind, which suggests that Haaland could get the kind of passes that only Kevin De Bruyne used to try.

If games come down to a series of individual battles, City do have players in both attack and defence who can thrive, even if there will probably be some painful afternoons as they find their feet. Sunday in Cardiff was one of them, and it will inevitably raise questions about how many more could follow.

Even if there are areas to be concerned about, it is still very early days, with plenty of time for those ideas to be improved upon, for the players to become used to them, and for tweaks and evolutions to be made.

There will inevitably be doubts about life post-Pep, but it cannot be denied that the midfield is in urgent need of a makeover and the football is likely to be pretty different. Still, it is too early to make any judgments.