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Manchester City fell to Brighton and Hove Albion in the Premier League on Saturday afternoon
Manchester City have been almost flawless since the Community Shield disaster. Enzo Maresca could not have asked for a better start to his return to the Etihad Stadium with seven consecutive Premier League wins, plus wins over Porto and AEK Athens in the Champions League. Even the defeat against Paris Saint-Germain gave the Blues optimism.
However, when Maresca was looking for a reason to remain modest, he finds it with an undesirable character taking his side. After 11 minutes against Brighton on Saturday, the visitors took the lead against City. A dangerous ball fell to Yasin Ayari, who could not miss from close range.
City have conceded three goals in the first 15 minutes of Premier League matches so far this campaign. Only Ipswich Town (five) and Crystal Palace (five) have conceded more in the Premier League this season.
Against Sunderland they were pulled back by Brian Brobbey, moments after Enzo Fernandez had given them the lead. At Aston Villa, a mistake by Marc Guehi saw Nicolas Jackson beat on six minutes. Ayari’s opener was the third time in five Premier League games that City have conceded inside 15 minutes.
This worrying trend is not new. The Community Shield defeat saw Arsenal take the lead in the opening minute. At the time, Maresca clearly saw it as a learning curve in Cardiff for his team. “I think a big part of the game was in the first goal we conceded,” he said. “Unfortunately after 30 seconds we conceded the first one. I think the reaction was good, before they scored the second goal we had three or four chances to score and tie the game.
“Unfortunately we missed the chances and then after the second goal it became more difficult. In general, I’m always worried even when we win matches, so imagine how that [when] we didn’t win the match.
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“It’s just the beginning, we have a lot of things we have to do better. I think the reaction was good after the first goal and now we try to reset and analyze the game and think about the next game from Tuesday.”
What will worry Maresca is that the city will not learn its lesson. These early goals set the tone for the matches and have seen the Blues come up empty-handed in their last two Premier League games.
Maresca will believe it’s early days, and it is – the city manager has only been in the job for four months. But City need to start switching on at the start of matches before this turns into something much more serious for the Blues.
If they want to collect trophies this season, City need to be tighter in the first 15 minutes. This carelessness at the beginning of games starts to cost them.
