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 individual scorer, a squad still loaded with technical security, and a club structure that has spent years removing chaos from elite football operations. Yet the first proper attacking question of the post-Pep Guardiola era is uncomfortable precisely 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 season 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 right 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, and with Guardiola, Bernardo Silva and John Stones no longer in the dressing room, Maresca cannot simply ask the same attack to carry the same habits into a different era.
Haaland 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 to move alongside Alan Shearer and Harry Kane on three Premier League Golden Boots.
Only Thierry Henry and Mohamed Salah have won the award more often. Haaland has reached that company before turning his City spell into anything like a long career.
The broader output is just as instructive. City’s forwards review listed 38 goals and nine assists for Haaland in 2025/26. Their PFA Players’ Player of the Year shortlist announcement also noted eight Champions League goals and three in the FA Cup, numbers which show he was not merely flat-track bullying league opposition. He scored across competitions and across game states.
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 the first window on an expensive 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.
That is the habit Maresca has to break without weakening the weapon.
Gap behind him is real 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 decided by thin weeks, awkward away games and the occasional month when the striker is still scoring but not quite bending matches to his will.
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, Bernardo Silva turning sterile possession into pressure, Riyad Mahrez or Raheem Sterling changing the angle from wide areas. 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. Semenyo’s league return gives Maresca a more direct runner who can attack open grass and punish teams that overcommit to Haaland.
Omar Marmoush, Savinho and Phil Foden each offer different solutions, but the burden is structural. Maresca’s job is to turn those options into a repeatable attacking spread rather than a collection of useful cameos around the main event.
That is why City’s previous interest in another forward profile should not be read only as transfer-market curiosity. It reflects a broader question about how many ways this squad can score when a game becomes cramped.
Maresca must protect Haaland by asking less of him
The paradox is simple: City may get even more from Haaland by reducing the amount of attacking responsibility that visibly lands on him.
That does not mean fewer touches by design, fewer crosses, or a false attempt to turn him into a decoy. It means building passages where the opposition cannot collapse four players around him because they trust nobody else will appear in the same zone with conviction.
There are three obvious mechanisms Maresca can sharpen quickly:
- Earlier weak-side arrivals from the opposite winger or advanced midfielder when Haaland pins the centre-backs.
- More cut-back occupation from No.8s, especially when full-backs are dragged toward the ball.
- Cleaner second-phase shots from the edge of the box after blocked Haaland actions, an area City have sometimes treated 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 cross missed Aguero, Sterling arrived. 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.
First month gives him no hiding place
City’s opening runway makes the issue immediate. The Premier League’s summer-friendlies guide has the 2026/27 season starting on 22 August. The Guardian reported that Maresca’s first City match is scheduled against Inter Milan on 1 August, before the Community Shield against Arsenal on 16 August and the Premier League opener against Bournemouth the following weekend.
That is not a gentle introduction. Inter will test City’s positional patience. Arsenal will test whether Maresca can hurt an elite domestic opponent before his system is fully bedded in. Bournemouth, as a league opener, is exactly the kind of fixture where dominance without variety can become more stressful than it should.
The World Cup complicates the picture further. Haaland’s tournament workload with Norway, Cherki’s involvement with France and the staggered returns of City’s wider squad all reduce the amount of clean training time Maresca can bank before competitive pressure arrives.
That makes the attacking plan less about grand reinvention and more about clarity. Which winger attacks the far post? Which midfielder becomes the second runner? Which full-back holds width when Haaland drags both centre-backs into the six-yard corridor? Which player is empowered to shoot early rather than recycle again?
These are the questions that turn a dominant territorial side into a ruthless one.
Verdict: Maresca’s first signature test
Khaldoon Al Mubarak’s public message around Maresca has been one of alignment, confidence and continuity. City’s chairman spoke of a manager suited to the club’s football organisation, and that matters. Maresca knows the building. He knows the standards. He knows 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 the size of 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.
