Former Manchester City goalkeeper Joe Hart believes the club will not saddle new head coach Enzo Maresca with the same weight of expectation that defined the Pep Guardiola era, despite City’s 3-0 Community Shield defeat to Arsenal at the weekend.
Maresca’s first competitive game in charge could hardly have gone worse. Arsenal raced into an early lead inside 24 seconds through Riccardo Calafiori, before going on to dominate a City side that looked short of both cohesion and confidence.
It was an afternoon that raised early questions about how smoothly the Italian’s reign at the Etihad will begin.
Hart, however, believes the club’s hierarchy is realistic enough not to let one bad afternoon shape the mood heading into the new campaign.
Speaking on BBC Radio 5 Live’s Monday Night Club, Hart said: “I think the club isn’t heaping massive expectation on this season. I think they still believe that they’ve got the team and they’ve got the quality to challenge.
“I still feel they’ll want to be pushing on all fronts. But the same sort of pressure, as an organisation, I don’t think will be on this season.”
External scrutiny will be ‘immediate’ if results dip
While Hart is confident there won’t be undue pressure from within the club, he was equally clear that the outside noise around Maresca will be loud and unforgiving if performances do not pick up quickly.
“I don’t think they’re going to be under pressure internally,” Hart said.
“Externally, there’s always going to be the noise. Maresca will come immediately under fire in terms of how people want to jump all over Man City if they do struggle.
“Internally, I think they’re intelligent enough as a business to understand that what’s going on right now is going to be difficult.”
His comments capture the strange position City find themselves in. This is a club that won four Premier League titles in a row between 2021 and 2024, but which now watches Arsenal sit as the team to beat.
Mikel Arteta’s side finally got the better of City in a competitive fixture that has too often gone the other way, winning by a distance that will have alarmed the Etihad faithful.
The scale of the rebuild facing Maresca is significant. Manchester City have lost serial winners Bernardo Silva and John Stones as free agents, to Real Madrid and Inter Milan respectively.
Rodri has also moved to Barcelona. The World Cup and Ballon d’Or winner’s departure would strip out yet more leadership from a squad already adjusting to life without Guardiola.
City have moved in the transfer market themselves, agreeing a club-record £116m deal for Nottingham Forest’s Elliot Anderson, and are also said to be pursuing Lille teenager Ayyoub Bouaddi and Chelsea’s Enzo Fernández.
For his part, Maresca has tried to project calm and ambition rather than anxiety. Addressing the club’s title expectations before the Community Shield defeat, he said he was “completely excited” to be taking charge.
He added that he understood “the expectation when you join a club like City” is “to win games, to win titles and to compete for titles.”
Whether that ambition survives first contact with a difficult opening to the Premier League season remains to be seen.
Hart’s assessment suggests City’s boardroom will show patience even if early results are shaky — but he was careful to stress that patience from within the building may count for little if the criticism from outside grows too loud, too fast.
