MANCHESTER, England — Enzo Maresca didn’t wait until his post-match news conference to say he needs more players. Picking center back Marc Guéhi in midfield on the opening day of the season did the talking for him.
Central midfielders Rodri and Tijjani Reijnders both left Manchester City this week. Longtime star Bernardo Silva is gone, too.
It meant that when AFC Bournemouth turned up at the Etihad Stadium on Sunday, Maresca felt the need to play summer signing Elliot Anderson in midfield alongside Guehi and Nico O’Reilly, a player Maresca has said himself is a left-back.
Even Guehi admitted he was “surprised.” So was everyone else.
It was a gamble that almost backfired. City were slow and disjointed for much of the game. It only changed when Rayan Cherki came off the bench in the second half to create late goals for Guehi and Josko Gvardiol as Maresca’s team came from behind to kick off their Premier League campaign with a nervy 2-1 win.
Cherki’s second assist to carve through Bournemouth’s defence in the 91st minute was a moment of genius. City needed it. So did Maresca. He also needs more players — although after picking such a surprising team, he didn’t need to say it explicitly.
“It’s a work in progress,” Maresca said. “It’s day by day. At the moment I don’t have an ideal 11 players.”
Asked specifically about the decision to play Guehi in midfield, he simply said it was “a solution.” He will hope he doesn’t have to try it again. One new midfielder is already on the way.
On Sunday morning, City agreed a €100 million deal with Lille for 18-year-old Ayyoub Bouaddi. He had a fantastic World Cup with Morocco, but he is a teenager with fewer than 100 senior club games under his belt and no Premier League experience.
Given his age and relative inexperience, Bouaddi will come with some uncertainty. But then that’s true of City in general.
Maresca on the touchline instead of Pep Guardiola is the biggest change. But when you throw in the departures of Rodri, Silva and John Stones, it starts to look like a bigger transition than even the club expected.
Rodri is a huge loss. City will say that getting more than £65 million for a 30-year-old with recent injury problems and a year left on his contract represents a good negotiation. The counter-argument is that keeping an experienced Ballon d’Or winner to help ease Maresca into a daunting job is worth far more than any transfer fee.
Maresca has said he wants to find “a new Rodri.” That’s easier said than done, particularly with just nine days left of the transfer window. At one point in his post-match news conference, Maresca joked that the new Rodri was Guehi. He did well enough in a new position, but it’s not a viable long-term option.
Without Rodri, Silva or Stones, Maresca fielded City’s youngest team on the opening day of the season since 2008. It was to their credit that, despite looking short of cohesion and rhythm, they were able to find a way to beat Bournemouth and inflict their first league defeat since January.
Bournemouth’s Marco Rose, another of the league’s new managers after replacing Andoni Iraola in the summer, said the game was lost in “the details.”
“We did many good things, but how the game went at the end, to lose that way, was unlucky,” the German said.
“The game lasts 90 minutes. At the end it’s about details. We lost the game on details. It’s never done here.”
Maresca argued that his team deserved to win, but there was a tinge of relief to his celebrations once Gvardiol’s winner was confirmed by a VAR check.
“The spirit was fantastic” he said. “It’s a game we deserved to win. You don’t need to wait for the last five minutes. We missed chances and it became more complicated.”
He will hope that the squad looks different this time next week.
Omar Marmoush, Nico González and Jack Grealish were on the bench against Bournemouth, but could all leave before the deadline.
Bouaddi is set to arrive in Manchester on Monday and there could be other midfielders following. An initial enquiry for Adam Wharton has been knocked back and there’s still interest in midfielder Enzo Fernández. Palmeiras winger Allan is likely to come in to replace Savinho.
City are expecting to be busy between now and Sept. 1.
With so many changes, more comings and goings possible before the deadline and other players still recovering from the World Cup, there’s a sense of unknown about City.
Are they genuine challengers for the title? Or will this be a truly transitional season when their battle is focused on finishing in the Champions League places?
At the moment, it’s impossible to tell. With a team of square pegs in round holes, Maresca managed to get off to a winning start against Bournemouth. But it was an opening day which ended with more questions than answers.
