Man City’s season awards at the break: a £116m standout, a centre-back who lost his way and one question for May
Ten league games and one international break into Enzo Maresca’s first season, Man City have given us a bit of everything: a perfect start, a historic slump, a £116m midfielder who already looks like a fixture and a centre-back who has lost his way.
The numbers are simple enough. Manchester City won their first seven league games, including 3-0 at Anfield and 1-0 at Old Trafford, then lost the next three: 2-1 at Aston Villa, 1-0 at home to Brighton and 3-1 at the City Ground. That leaves them third on 21 points, a point behind Brighton and six behind leaders Arsenal.
So with a fortnight before Fulham come to the Etihad, this feels like the right moment to slow down and hand out some awards. Some are for the good, some for the bad, and one is for whatever Maresca’s back four have been doing since late October.
Who has been Man City’s player of the season so far?
Elliot Anderson, and it isn’t especially close. He has done two jobs for most of the autumn, screening the defence and carrying the ball forward, and in a midfield that had to be rebuilt after Kevin De Bruyne, Bernardo Silva and Rodri, he has been the one name you can pencil in every week alongside Erling Haaland and Gianluigi Donnarumma.
What makes it more impressive is how quickly it has happened. Midfielders usually need months to settle at City, and Anderson hasn’t needed any. Haaland said as much after the 3-2 win in Leipzig, where Anderson’s surging run and cross set up the winner: “He has been amazing, he has had an amazing start to his City career and that is what you expect. You have to come straight in and perform.”
He isn’t flawless. It was his hesitation in midfield that let Liam Delap steal the ball for Forest’s second goal. But one bad moment in ten games is a fair return for a £116m summer signing, and he gets our award comfortably.
The runner-up: Iliman Ndiaye
If Anderson is the obvious pick, Iliman Ndiaye is the fun one. The former Everton forward plays with his heart on his sleeve and takes people on, something City lost in the more controlled late years under Pep Guardiola. His cross for Enzo Fernandez in Leipzig was his fourth assist in his last five appearances, and three of those four were balls into the box that were headed in.
The shame is the timing. Ndiaye was mostly an impact player when City were winning every week, and with Antoine Semenyo out until December he is only now getting a run in the side, just as the team hits its worst spell. We think the goals will come once he is allowed to drift inside more often.
Biggest surprise: what has happened to Marc Guehi?
Guehi built his reputation on being a seven or eight out of ten every single week. He started all but one of England’s World Cup games, and for the first part of this season he looked like exactly the steadying presence City paid for.
That version has gone missing. Over the last month he has looked nervous, and the mistakes have piled up. Part of the explanation arrived after Forest: Maresca revealed Guehi had asked to come off at half-time, the hip had been troubling him for weeks, and he has since pulled out of the England squad to stay in Manchester and get right for Fulham. A defender whose best quality is that you can trust him can’t play through pain for long without it showing.
Runner-up: how open City have been
The other surprise is the football itself. We expected Maresca’s City to be careful and controlled. Instead they have attacked with very few brakes, and it has been brilliant against tired opponents and naive against good ones. The players haven’t changed much since August; the opponents have just got sharper at punishing the gaps.
The best individual moments of the Man City season so far
Rayan Cherki wins this one. He is not a player you can always build a structure around, and there are nights when he infuriates as much as he dazzles, but when he decides to win a game on his own, there is nobody in the squad quite like him.
His goal at Anfield summed him up: a dummy to release Josko Gvardiol, a backheel returned into his path, a feint away from Jeremie Frimpong and a finish under Alisson. Jeremy Doku’s curler into the far top corner in the same game was just as good, and both made the shortlist for the Premier League’s October Goal of the Month. Cherki was also the only City player who looked like scoring at Forest, with a half volley into the top corner from Doku’s deflected cross.
The moment we started believing
That 3-0 at Liverpool on 11 October. There was noise everywhere around the club, Anfield was the last place anyone wanted to go, and City just turned up, did the job and went home. Whatever happens next, that afternoon showed a dressing room pulling for each other.
Low point: Forest, and three defeats in a row
Everyone knew City needed to stop the slide at the City Ground, and they went two down inside 18 minutes. Gvardiol lost the ball in his own half for the first, Anderson was robbed for the second, and Delap, who had failed to score in his previous five starts, finished it with his second of the night after 73 minutes. Nottingham Forest had not scored in five home league games before that evening.
City had 78 per cent of the ball and 753 passes to Forest’s 206, and hit the target four times. We went through the whole thing in our Nottingham Forest 3-1 Man City report, but the worst part was watching players point at each other after each mistake. It made City only the second side in English top-flight history, after Sheffield Wednesday in 1904-05, to win their first seven league games and lose the next three.
The cup win over Brighton, when City scraped through 4-3 on penalties after being out-shot (as we explained in what City’s shootout escape meant), looks a lot less like an escape and a lot more like a warning now.
Who deserves a better deal?
Rayan Aït-Nouri, for a start. He has not played a single Premier League minute this season despite costing a reported £37m, and he hasn’t even come off the bench in the league. With Nico O’Reilly and Gvardiol ahead of him, a January move looks the most likely ending, and we covered the clubs lining up in Everton joining the race for Aït-Nouri.
Allan Elias deserves a mention too. The £32m arrival from Palmeiras has played 10 minutes of league football and still earned a first senior Brazil call-up from Carlo Ancelotti. Put some respect on his name.
Who will make us look silly by May?
Maresca, one way or the other. Either he finds a fix for the open, changing back line and everyone criticising him now looks daft, or he keeps doing the same thing and those who backed him look worse. He knew the comparison with Guardiola would arrive after ten games, and it has: “People will be comparing it to Pep after 10 games. But it’s something, it is what it is. It doesn’t put pressure on me,” he said in the summer.
Our verdict on the Man City season awards so far: there is more good than the last three results suggest. Anderson, Ndiaye and Cherki give Maresca a real base, and a fit Guehi changes the defence. But Fulham at home on Saturday 21 November and the trip to Arsenal eight days later will tell us whether the break was a reset or just a pause, and with the appeal against the 114-charge verdict due to be heard in December, City need the football to give them some good news.