Can this Man City really win the Premier League? Sunderland thriller shows best and worst of Enzo Maresca's team
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Can this Man City really win the Premier League? Sunderland thriller shows best and worst of Enzo Maresca's team originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
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ETIHAD STADIUM, MANCHESTER – Enzo Maresca praised the battling qualities and the pleasing hard edge shown by his Manchester City team during the recent victories over Coventry City, Porto and Manchester United.
During each match, City had to come through spells of pressure, were fortunate to beat Coventry and played with 10 men for 70 minutes in their Manchester derby win.
But there were three clean sheets. City were robust and streetwise. All the sorts of things that please a new head coach.
Before this match, Maresca said he would spend the international break reviewing all of City's matches so far. He might want to reserve one of the two weeks for Sunday's rollercoaster 5-3 win over Sunderland.
"To be honest, I prefer to win 1-0 than 5-3, but I expected a very difficult game," Maresca said. "The good thing is we found a way to win the game."
It was one of those afternoons where a match becomes an untameable beast that you have to ride gamely and hope for an agreeable outcome. An increasingly physical and transition-based Premier League can produce such contests, although not often as unhinged as this one.
This reality – the cool kids call it the new tactical meta – is the one within which reigning champions Arsenal were demolished 3-0 by a rampant Brighton. That was the context today; one to ask Manchester City, "What have you got?" The answer was "a lot of mad stuff, but we'll have a good time."
MORE:Arsenal stats vs. Brighton: The numbers behind Gunners' biggest Premier League defeat in three years
Man City defensive problems against Sunderland
First, the not-so-good mad stuff. Including Thursday night's 5-0 Carabao Cup win over Norwich, City have kept four clean sheets in succession. In all of those games, there were moments where they were vulnerable to the counter-attack. But that comes with the territory for a team that dominates possession. When it mattered in those games, individual defenders and goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnarumma stood up to scrutiny.
Perhaps the most alarming element for Maresca from today's win is that Sunderland's main threat did not come on the break. Twice in the first half, they were picked apart by masterful Enzo Le Fee passes, the French playmaker who was in magical form.
On Sunderland's second equaliser, City held their defensive line on the edge of the 18-yard box. This is a tactic that has seen Maresca's teams caught out in the past, but it should also be noted that City's offside trap worked perfectly during the win at Porto. Brian Brobbey was the beneficiary on this occasion, scoring the second of three tap-ins.
"How many times have you heard a manager say that things happen inside the box? What we try to avoid is them inside our box, so it's just that," Maresca said, explaining the tactic afterwards. "Sometimes we concede a goal like today, but sometimes also we avoid. The idea is to bring as much play as possible in the opposition box and as little as possible in our box."
Brobbey very much earned the matchball as Sunderland's powerhouse center-forward drove City captain Ruben Dias to distraction. Holding midfielder Elliot Anderson dropped in to share the Brobbey burden when defending against long clearances, but that left more room for Le Fee and the ever-astute Granit Xhaka to enjoy themselves. Enzo Fernandez's free-spirited approach to playing in a double pivot might also have been a factor.
Part of Maresca's analysis can fall back on his pre-match assessment that Sunderland are a very good side. They pushed Arsenal to the limit at the Stadium of Light in the previous round of fixtures and will again rue the fact they have nothing to show for going toe-to-toe with one of the best teams in the country. Brobbey and Le Fee will rightly draw plaudits, but this is a team wholly committed to boss Regis Le Bris' strategy. You can see it in every duel that they contest wholeheartedly and cleverly. Physically, they're a nightmare to play against and showed cutting edge to boot here.
"It's about the quality of our players," Le Bris said. "I think the game plan was really clear about how we were able to manage the spaces. And when they went tight, we had Brian as a good target. When they decided to protect the central area, we got an overload. So I think we managed this situation really well."
Man City's best attacker against Sunderland
These are Maresca's reasons to be cheerful. Rayan Cherki scored his third of the season after Fernandez opened his City account with a clever free-kick. A brace from the tireless Antoine Semenyo either side of halftime was the most influential contribution, but deadline day signing Iliman Ndiaye picked up from where he left off at Old Trafford last weekend. Tenacious off the ball and graceful with it, he looks perfect for Maresca's City.
We're still learning what that team will ultimately look like, but this felt like their most sharply contrasting performance to the Pep Guardiola era. When games started to hurtle downhill like this one, Guardiola's favorite demand was for his team to "put the ball in the fridge", cool things down and get everything back under control.
That's hard to do in the modern Premier League. Even harder when you no longer have Rodri and Bernardo Silva to call upon. During their final two seasons under Guardiola, City did not always manage to do this, but they would at least try. As this thrilling shootout with Sunderland developed, it felt like they did not even try to control the game. Instead of the fridge, they have Cherki backheeling the ball into the sauna.
"For sure we can control better, keeping the ball, no doubt," Maresca said. "There are games where you want to control the game and keep the ball, but there is also another team. I watched Sunderland against Arsenal last week and it was another crazy game. It's difficult."
But the likes of Fernandez, Cherki, Ndiaye, Semenyo and Erling Haaland – obviously he scored, meaning he now has goals against all 26 opponents he has faced in the Premier League – mean City can survive and thrive in these crazy games. These are very early days and there will be situations where this Maresca version looks like an obvious downgrade on the Guardiola model. But the willingness to roll with a whole manner of punches is a clear improvement on last season.
City under Maresca are nowhere near the finished product, nor should they be. But five wins from five in the Premier League, seven from seven overall and a place at the top of the table heading into the international break was hard to foresee after their 3-0 defeat to Arsenal in the Community Shield. There was a chasm between the teams in Cardiff, but Maresca's men now look ready for the battle, irrespective of the terms of engagement.