How Enzo Maresca is exposing Elliot Anderson and Man City with duff tactics

Seven straight Premier League wins for Manchester City have been followed by three defeats. What’s gone wrong?

It’s easy to say that City’s issues have been prompted by the Premier League finding them guilty of financial nefariousness, but Enzo Maresca and City initially got on with business as they beat Liverpool and Ipswich. Since then there have been three defeats.

It has to be said that some of those opening wins were as much of a ‘sham’ as City’s sponsor contracts; the problems they encountered in the losses to Villa, Brighton and Nottingham Forest existed before.

Frank Lampard’s Coventry should have scored more than once, Sunderland scored three times, and Ipswich Town scored twice against them.

You can’t lose Pep Guardiola, sign loads of midfielders in the summer and assume that everything is going to be business as usual.

So what is going wrong? Why do they look so soft in the centre, and what is with Enzo Maresca’s Pep-like tinkering?

Soft in the middle

Against Nottingham Forest, they were pressed, harried and rushed on the ball by Forest’s physicality and aggression.

On multiple occasions, they lost a duel or the ball in the middle of the pitch, and Forest ran through them to be clean on goal.

Oliver Glasner was so committed in this approach that, for the first goal, Jair Cunha – as a right centre-back – followed Josko Gvardiol out as he was on the ball close to his own goal. The Brazilian defender stole the ball before smashing in Forest’s opener.

It feels as though Maresca is boldly gambling with placing six players really high up the pitch and relying on Elliot Anderson and the defence to not only get the ball up to them but to quell any challenges from players trying to steal the ball from them in the meantime.

For Liam Delap’s first goal, City literally have six players in attack, with Gvardiol the highest and Marc Guehi next to Anderson also positioned incredibly high.

After Anderson loses one tackle in the centre circle, it leads to Forest again being able to counter-attack with City scant at the back, as most of their players were caught up the pitch.

Maresca has instructed City to stay high; this includes Anderson’s partner and the summer’s most expensive signing: Enzo Fernandez.

The problem is that if you have the Argentinian supporting the attack high in the press or even wide as an extra midfielder, they can be played through.

Maresca is basically using Gvardiol as an extra midfielder in the half-spaces and trying to use seven attackers to break down low blocks, but he’s spent so much time focusing on how City will attack teams, he hasn’t banked on the fact they’re giving up transition after transition.

Man City loose in build-up

The issues in transition are exacerbated by how incredibly loose City have been in their build-up play.

If you are attempting to play with lots of attackers and are using your full-back as an extra central midfielder, you cannot give the ball away cheaply, but that’s exactly what they’ve been doing.

It begs the question why Maresca simply doesn’t instruct a full-back to stay deeper as an extra man to pass to, but also as an extra player who can prevent goalscoring opportunities, or use Enzo Fernandez deeper next to Anderson and push the back line wider across the defensive line.

As you can see from the image above, everyone – including Anderson, Guehi and Gvardiol – has attack on their minds, even with City having just Dias and Abdukodir Khusanov back.

God knows why he’s hell-bent on playing Gvardiol at full-back when Nico O’Reilly is more tried and tested as an inverted full-back.

He also doesn’t seem to trust Ayyoub Bouaddi, who has done nothing but impress with every minute he’s got.

Conclusion
City were a tad lucky in some of their earlier games and, frankly, had played every team that is currently placed from 17th to 20th. And everyone seems to have forgotten the very, very controversial offside goal from Erling Haaland to win the Manchester derby.

Are the charges creeping up on everyone’s mind, as Gary Neville seems to think? No, I don’t believe they are.

Instead, what is happening is that Maresca is doing what Guardiola did towards the end of his tenure that everyone seems to overlook. Both are obsessed with attacking and fitting as many players in the opposition’s half; they have forgotten to keep the door shut at the other end.

The alarming problem for City is that Maresca isn’t Guardiola, so they handle the ball with less care.

The results at the start of the season needed context, and the last three games have exposed the problems hugely.

Towards the end of Maresca’s time at Chelsea, he also had problems on the pitch, but he was able to engineer his exit as the City job was ready and waiting for him.

That won’t be the case for him in Manchester, however, and with City’s appeal verdict to come in early 2027, he needs to get hold of these issues before the club is in danger of spiralling