Manchester City’s perfect start to the season has well and truly come undone. Enzo Maresca‘s side suffered their second consecutive Premier League defeat on Saturday, beaten 1-0 by Brighton at the Etihad Stadium, and the Italian head coach made no attempt to disguise his frustration afterwards.
City had opened the campaign with seven straight wins, a run that suggested business as usual for the champions under their new manager.
But back-to-back losses — first at Aston Villa, now at home to Brighton — have exposed a recurring problem that Maresca is desperate to eradicate: individual errors gifting goals to the opposition.
This time it was Matheus Nunes who paid the price. The Portuguese full-back was caught out defending a cross, allowing the ball to be worked back across goal for Brighton’s winner.
A week earlier, it had been Marc Guehi and goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnarumma whose mistakes were picked apart after the loss at Villa Park.
Speaking to the club’s official website after the match, Maresca did not shy away from naming the issue.
“In this moment we are conceding silly goals that we can avoid and hopefully we can avoid in the next game,” he said.
“Unfortunately it is happening for our players but I think it is part of the game, part of football, it happens many times against us, we need to analyse understand what we can do better and try to move on.”
‘No one is happy’ — Maresca vows to find answers
It is the first time City have lost consecutive league matches since Maresca took charge. The manner of the defeats, chances created and points squandered are clearly stung.
Despite that, the 46-year-old was careful to strike a balanced tone, acknowledging that a title-winning side was never going to sail through an entire campaign unbeaten.
“For sure we are not happy,” Maresca said. “The players, me the coaching staff, no one is happy when we lose games at all, for sure, but we were aware we were not going to win all the games so these kind of moments arrive. We just need to try to improve things, move on and try to win games as soon as possible.”
The sense of déjà vu from the defeat at Villa Park was not lost on the Italian, who felt his side had again done enough in general play to deserve something from the match.
“It is a very similar feeling to what we had after the Aston Villa match,” he explained. “Unfortunately, we created enough chances to get some points but we didn’t score, at this moment, things are going like this.
“We did enough to deserve a positive result but we have to move forward and try to win matches. In the last two or three matches this has happened several times, but we have to analyse how we can perform better and move forward.”
It is a familiar dilemma for a City side that has dominated English football for the best part of a decade: creating more than enough to win games, yet undone at the other end by moments of individual carelessness.
Maresca’s challenge now is to turn that attacking superiority into results again, before the gap at the top of the table starts to look uncomfortable.
City will have a quick chance to respond. Their focus now turns to the Champions League in midweek, before an immediate return to Premier League action as they look to arrest the slide and remind the rest of the division why they remain the team to beat.
