Manchester City's Struggles: From Perfect Start to Uncertainty
Manchester City’s perfect start has vanished in a blur of red flags and uneasy questions. Enzo Maresca now walks into this international break not with the swagger of a record-breaking newcomer, but with a to-do list that runs right through his squad.
Seven straight wins to open the Premier League season had painted a familiar picture: City rolling, City ruthless, City untouchable. Then came the crash. Three defeats on the spin, six points dropped behind an Arsenal side that looks every inch like a champion defending its crown.
The timing is impossible to ignore. In September, City were found guilty of breaching the Premier League’s financial rules. The club has appealed and continues to play on, but the verdict hangs in the air like a storm cloud. No one knows how hard the eventual downpour will be.
The weight of uncertainty
Inside any dressing room, uncertainty is poison that works slowly.
Dr Paul McCarthy, a leading sports psychologist with a quarter of a century’s experience at top clubs across England, Scotland, Germany and France, knows the pattern. He talks about “piecing together a jigsaw” when players’ lives – on and off the pitch – get disrupted.
“Players are like everyone else - they talk about what is going on in their own lives and things that are topical, especially about uncertain events,” he told BBC Sport. That uncertainty breeds stories, rumours, doubts. Over time, as defeats stack up, something more damaging can erode: belief.
McCarthy calls it “collective efficacy” – the shared conviction within a squad that it will do what it needs to do to win. City have built an era on that certainty. Now, consecutive losses have started to chip away at it.
Asked directly whether the drawn-out appeal process could affect focus, McCarthy did not hesitate. “Yeah, that would be a very reasonable human response,” he said. When people don’t know what’s coming, they feel a lack of control. Research backs it up: uncertainty can be more stressful than bad news itself.
Players turn up, train, play. The fate of the club sits far beyond their remit, yet it shapes the backdrop to everything they do.
From flawless to fragile
On the pitch, the numbers tell a stark story.
City were top after that immaculate seven-game surge. Now they sit third, behind Arsenal and Brighton, and their defensive record has cracked open. They have conceded 13 goals in 10 league games – their worst start at the back since 2008-09, when they had already let in 16.
The shift has been dramatic. In the first seven matches of the season, not a single goal came from an individual error. In the last three defeats – to Aston Villa, Brighton and Nottingham Forest – four goals have been directly shaped by mistakes.
That is not just bad luck. That is a team suddenly unsure.
Defensive issues have been exposed, passing out from the back has wobbled under pressure, and opponents sense vulnerability where there used to be only control.
Maresca’s gamble: the 3-1-6
None of this exists in a vacuum. Maresca has not simply tried to keep Pep Guardiola’s machine ticking. He has tried to rewire it.
While at Chelsea, in a video for NBC Sports, he outlined his thinking: counters morphing into a 3-2-2-3, then pushing one higher to create a 3-1-6. Six attackers used to overload a back five, as he did against Inter Milan.
This season at City, that 3-1-6 has become more permanent. One holding midfielder sacrificed for an extra attacking midfielder. It is bold, aggressive football, fitting for a squad loaded with technical quality.
But systems only work if the players asked to execute them truly fit the roles.
The Anderson question
The biggest tactical question sits right in the middle of the pitch.
Elliot Anderson, by nature, is a roaming midfielder. At Nottingham Forest he thrived on intensity: defending high and wide, pressing, joining attacks, using his physicality and energy to disrupt and drive.
Maresca and his staff have tried to reshape him. With Rodri gone in the summer, Anderson has been nudged into a sitting role, the single pivot in that 3-1-6. It is a demanding position, the fulcrum of both protection and build-up.
Rodri himself needed time to grow into it when he first arrived. Anderson is now walking the same learning curve.
On its own, coaching a player into a key role is not a problem. The problem comes when the learning process happens in the middle of a tactical overhaul, with the team exposed through the centre.
Anderson has largely impressed, but habit is hard to erase. He steps out of that holding position to press, to track, to try to win the ball back. Clever opponents have spotted it, dragging him away and then playing through the gaps he leaves behind.
For Maresca, the real issue lies a step earlier. After the defeat to Forest, he cut to the heart of it: “You concede transitions when you lose the ball, and when you don't win duels.” The shape is risky; losing the ball cheaply in that shape is lethal.
A back line under strain
Behind Anderson, the safety net is not as secure as it once was.
Gianluigi Donnarumma is a towering presence, but he is not a goalkeeper famed for his distribution. He can play, but he is no metronome. The defenders in front of him are “serviceable” in possession, yet this season they have repeatedly cracked when pressed, gifting chances while trying to play out from the back.
Guardiola saw these fault lines last season and moved to cover them. His answer was to hand more responsibility to his midfielders in the build-up. Rodri and, crucially, Bernardo Silva became the escape routes – dropping deep, taking the ball under pressure, carrying City from their own box into midfield almost single-handedly.
Both are gone. Their absence has ripped away the subtle glue that held the structure together.
Anderson, for all his qualities, is not yet that kind of player. He cannot currently solve the build-up on his own the way Bernardo did, stepping into impossible pockets and knitting the team forward.
One possible solution sits elsewhere in the squad. Ayyoub Bouaddi has shown, notably against Brazil’s press at the World Cup, that he can operate as that deep, press-resistant outlet. He may not be a like-for-like replacement, but he offers a profile City increasingly lack.
Time to choose a path
So where does that leave Maresca?
He faces a delicate balance. Stick with the 3-1-6 and trust that Anderson grows into the role, that the back line settles, that collective belief hardens again under pressure. Or tweak the model, restore an extra holding midfielder, and sacrifice some attacking presence for stability.
The international break buys him time. Not comfort, not certainty, but time.
The appeal verdict will come when it comes. The sanctions, if they arrive, will land when they land. Maresca cannot control that. What he can control is how his team defends its box, how it builds from the back, how it protects a fragile core.
The early-season dream run is gone. The real test of his City reign starts now.
