Enzo Maresca does not walk into a broken Manchester City attack. That would be too easy, too dramatic and plainly untrue.
He inherits the Premier League’s most reliable scorer, a squad still loaded with technical security and a club structure built to remove chaos. Yet the first proper attacking question of the post-Pep Guardiola era is uncomfortable because the headline number is so healthy.
Erling Haaland scored 27 Premier League goals in 2025/26, won a third Golden Boot in four seasons and finished ten league goals clear of any City team-mate. Manchester City’s own forwards review had him on 38 goals and nine assists in all competitions, across 52 appearances and 4,143 minutes.
That is not a problem. It is an empire.
The issue for Maresca is whether City have allowed that empire to become too central to the way they solve matches. The Guardian’s early framing of Maresca’s in-tray identified a need to find broader scoring routes after Guardiola’s departure, and that should sit near the top of his first tactical audit.
City can still overwhelm opponents. Haaland can still decide games other strikers barely influence. But after two years without a Premier League title, Maresca cannot simply ask the same attack to carry the same habits into a different era.
Haaland’s Numbers Are Still Absurd
Start with the obvious. Haaland remains the most frightening penalty-box forward in England.
City’s official Golden Boot confirmation underlined the scale of his domestic consistency: 36 league goals in his first season, 27 in his second and now another 27-goal campaign. That moved him alongside Alan Shearer and Harry Kane on three Premier League Golden Boots.
Only Thierry Henry and Mohamed Salah have won the award more often.
That production gives Maresca a luxury most new managers never receive. He does not need to manufacture a No.9, persuade a senior striker to buy in or gamble his first window on the centre-forward market.
But there is a catch. When a striker scores at that level, teams start to build emotional and tactical shortcuts around him.
Possession can become a waiting room for the final pass. Wide players can begin serving the box rather than attacking it. Midfielders can look for the perfect Haaland lane instead of arriving beyond him.
ReadManCity has already examined how Haaland’s World Cup workload gives City both a boost and a warning. Maresca now has a related club-level question: how does he keep Haaland central without making City predictable?
The Gap Behind Him Is The Warning
City’s own review made the gap plain. Haaland’s 27 league goals left him ten clear of Antoine Semenyo, who was his closest City colleague in the Premier League scoring list.
That is not disastrous. Every elite team has a main finisher. But the margin matters in a title race shaped by awkward away games, tight weeks and short dips in form.
Under Guardiola, City often had layers of threat: Ilkay Gundogan arriving late, Kevin De Bruyne punching through the right half-space, Phil Foden attacking the box and Bernardo Silva turning sterile possession into pressure.
The point was not simply that City had goalscorers. It was that opponents could never fully identify where the decisive action would come from.
Maresca’s City need to restore that uncertainty.
Rayan Cherki’s first season hints at one route. City said he produced 10 goals and 15 assists across 52 appearances in all competitions, a profile that already looks more like a creator-finisher hybrid than a pure service player.
ReadManCity has already covered why Cherki’s World Cup involvement matters for City’s evolving first-team picture, and his role could become even more important under Maresca.
Semenyo’s league return gives City a more direct runner who can attack open grass and punish teams that overcommit to Haaland. Omar Marmoush, Savinho and Phil Foden also offer different solutions.
The burden is structural. Maresca must turn those options into a repeatable attacking spread, not a collection of useful cameos around the main event.
Maresca Must Protect Haaland By Asking Less Of Him
The paradox is simple: City may get even more from Haaland by reducing how much attacking responsibility visibly lands on him.
That does not mean fewer touches by design or a false attempt to turn him into a decoy. It means building passages where opponents cannot collapse four players around him without being punished elsewhere.
There are three obvious mechanisms Maresca can sharpen quickly.
City need earlier weak-side arrivals from the opposite winger or advanced midfielder when Haaland pins the centre-backs. They also need more cut-back occupation from No.8s, especially when full-backs get dragged towards the ball.
The third detail is cleaner second-phase shooting from the edge of the box after blocked Haaland actions. City have sometimes treated that area as a recycling point rather than a finishing zone.
Those details sound small. They are not.
Guardiola’s best City teams buried opponents because the first action rarely had to be the last action. If the low ball bypassed Haaland, Gundogan or Foden appeared. If De Bruyne’s delivery was blocked, Rodri was waiting to restart the attack before the opponent could breathe.
Maresca has to rebuild that rhythm with different personalities and under a harsher spotlight.
ReadManCity has already argued that Maresca’s first transfer window must show whether he can edit Guardiola’s City rather than merely inherit it. The attacking spread will be one of the clearest measures of that.
Verdict: Maresca’s First Attacking Signature Test
Khaldoon Al Mubarak’s public message around Maresca has been one of alignment, confidence and continuity. That matters.
Maresca knows the building, the standards, the academy pathway and the tactical language. But continuity cannot become imitation.
Guardiola’s City belonged to Guardiola because the details constantly moved. The structure stayed recognisable, but the attacking emphasis changed with the players, the opposition and the era.
Maresca’s first City attack has to do the same.
Haaland will score. That is the safest assumption in English football. The sharper question is whether City can make his goals feel like the peak of a wider storm rather than the single road back to dominance.
If Maresca solves that early, he changes the mood around his appointment. He stops being defined by Guardiola’s shadow and starts being judged by the clarity of his own City.
If he does not, every tight game will carry the same familiar anxiety: plenty of control, plenty of territory and too many eyes fixed on one extraordinary No.9 to make the difference again.
