Maresca Blames Lack of Desire After Man City’s Third Straight League Defeat

• Enzo Maresca said Manchester City lost their duels and did not match Nottingham Forest’s intensity in a 3-1 defeat on Saturday, per The Guardian.
• It was City’s third straight Premier League defeat after seven wins to open the season, and it leaves them six points behind leaders Arsenal.
• Pundit Tony Cascarino says Maresca’s half-time double substitution of Josko Gvardiol and Marc Guehi reads as the manager pointing the finger at them, though Maresca said both had knocks.

Lost Duels, Missing Belief and Two Defenders Off at the Break

Manchester City lost 3-1 at Nottingham Forest on Saturday, and Enzo Maresca said the fault ran through the whole side: desire, intensity and a first half in which every duel went the other way.

City won their first seven games of the season. Then came the 2-1 defeat at Aston Villa, a 1-0 home loss to Brighton and now this. Maresca gave his verdict after the match.

“Today I think [the problem] has been general,” said Maresca. “It’s not about one player. In the first half we lost all the duels, all the contacts. Against this team, that is fighting relegation, if you don’t match them … it’s something we need to understand. In this kind of game, if you’re not able to win duels and second balls like in the first half, you struggle.

“You need desire and intensity to win second balls and duels. You require intensity or you struggle and we didn’t match their intensity. The second and third goals are copy and paste, lost duels first in the middle of pitch then at the edge of the box.”

He made the same point in more comments after the game. “In the first half we were not good enough – we didn’t match the intensity that these kind of games require,” Maresca said.

“If you are not able to win the second balls then you struggle. You have to match the desire to win second balls and duels, otherwise it is not good. When you lost balls the way we did and cannot recover immediately, it’s a matter of winning duels.”

“They are all different,” said Maresca. “But if you look at chances, possession, chances inside box, in all of them we were much, much better but we lost all of them. We’re going to use this international break to clarify what we can do better. We know we need to improve things and avoid this kind of game.”

Cunha and Delap Punish Gvardiol and Guehi

Jair Cunha dispossessed Gvardiol to score the opener. Liam Delap, a City academy graduate, then struck twice with muscular surges on the break. His first came after he thundered 45 yards unchecked, with Guehi waving him through and Ruben Dias dithering behind. It was the first time in seven years that City had gone two down inside 18 minutes.

Rayan Cherki pulled one back after 52 minutes with a half-volley off the bar, but Delap settled it with 17 minutes left. Forest’s last home league win before this came in April, and they out-ran City by 6km on the night.

Oliver Glasner, the Forest manager, kept his praise on the defending.

“The way we play football I think we’ve had many better games,” he said. “But how we defended, how passionately we defended, how tactically smart we defended, it was one of our better games.

“You should control everything and if you want to control it, you have to run because you have to be so quickly aware – they’re so good, such great players, such a good structure and they move the ball so quickly. Of course, you can just defend but you also need to go forward and this is what we did today in the right moments.”

“If you want to win against City, you need to do this,” Glasner said after the win. “Credit to Liam, these strikes are something you have or you don’t have.

“It can be a turning point but we have to prove it. The way we performed today should give us confidence.”

Cascarino Reads the Half-Time Change as Blame

Maresca said the problem was not one player. Cascarino read it differently. Gvardiol and Guehi both came off at half-time, replaced by Matheus Nunes and Nico O’Reilly, and Maresca said later that the pair had knocks and asked to come off. Cascarino, speaking on the Weekend Sports Breakfast, saw a message in it.

“What’s gone wrong is the biggest issue for me.”

“And it’s quite clear that when a manager makes two substitutions after 45 minutes, [Josko] Gvardiol and also Marc Guehi, who have come off at 46 minutes, he’s pointing the finger totally at them.”

Maresca has publicly backed Guehi and Donnarumma before, which makes the half-time change a bigger talking point. Cascarino went through the first goal and the wider defending.

“Now, for the first goal, I don’t think Marc Guehi’s ball is a great one into Gvardiol. And when he loses the ball, you’d expect a player of City’s quality to be able to handle that situation.”

“They defended awfully. They were awful yesterday defensively. And I’m not excluding [Ruben] Dias out of this as well. Didn’t play well.”

“And there were others. And they look like a team to me that there’s a real lack of belief.”

He argued that City’s problems showed long before this run, and pointed to the Community Shield, which Arsenal won 3-0.

“This great start they had… I mean, when I was at Community Shield, now people might think of this as, ‘Well, it’s Community Shield and people aren’t ready’.”

“They were awful in that Community Shield. They got beat 3-0 by Arsenal. And they were awful. They were second best everywhere.”

“And I remember thinking, ‘Wow, that City team, even in years gone by, when they played at the Community Shield, they were always pretty decent.'”

“They might not win it every year, but they were always a pretty decent side. They started on the back foot and then got going, and they showed their quality.”

Cascarino also referred to Gianluigi Donnarumma’s questionable display in the midweek Champions League win over RB Leipzig.

“Yesterday, if you’re looking at a team that is all over the place, and that includes the goalkeeper as well, Man City are there for the taking at the moment. It’s quite obvious.”

“What Brighton did last week to them – and beating them, and also being knocked out in the Cup, even though they lost on penalties – they’ve done enough to show that they’re a way better team for me than City are at the moment.”

Six Points Back and a Fortnight to Fix It

Jeremy Doku had no explanation for the first half.

“We are used to playing every two days – that’s not a reason,” Doku said. “If you ask me for the reason for our first half I don’t know.

“We reacted too late. We need to be fresh minds, start again and analyse what we can do better and move forward. The international break comes at the right moment for us to analyse and come back refreshed.”

City lost to Forest on the day Arsenal moved six points clear at the top with a win over Hull. City were found guilty by an independent commission and insist on their innocence, but the slump is a football problem. The team is unsure how to build from the back, and individual mistakes keep costing them.

Maresca has a two-week international break to work on it, and he thinks the time away could do the squad good.

“When you lose a game you always want to go again immediately to try to win games but I think that this international break, the last one until March, is also good for the players.

“We didn’t match the intensity. We need to understand the reason why and try to avoid the next games. There is no panic. We need to understand but no panic.”