MANCHESTER City’s 100% winning start to the Premier League season came to an abrupt end against Aston Villa – leaving Enzo Maresca with glaring defensive issues to resolve.
Nicolas Jackson’s double in a 2-1 home win for Villa means City have now managed only one clean sheet in their past six games and the form of goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnarumma and defender Marc Guehi is of concern.
Since the start of last season, only eight players have made more errors leading to Premier League goals than Donnarumma and Guehi with three each.
City’s most recent shutout came in their impressive victory at Liverpool two weeks ago but, around that game, City have conceded against teams ranging from Champions League holders Paris St-Germain to top-flight strugglers Sunderland.
Maresca was forced to try different combinations at the back against Villa, but as the legendary Sir Alex Ferguson once said, “attack wins you games, defence wins you titles”.
Though still early days in the campaign and guaranteed to be in the top two come the end of the weekend, City need to shore up their backline if they are to stay there.
By contrast, title rivals Arsenal moved level on points at the top of the table later in the day with a comfortable 2-0 win at home to Everton.
The Gunners have conceded just five goals in eight matches, with Saturday’s goals coming from centre-backs Ezri Konsa and Gabriel.
That’s back-to-back Premier League clean sheets for Mikel Arteta’s men, with the luxury of centre-back William Saliba still to come back into the side.
Only Manchester United – 1.16 in 1996-97 and 1.18 in 1999-00 – have won the Premier League title with a goals against rate worse than Man City’s current 1.13 per game. Arsenal’s goals against rate is currently 0.625 per game.
Asked if the two goals the conceded were avoidable, Maresca told TNT Sports: “Absolutely, both.
“Sometimes you have to be a bit more lucky because we only conceded those two chances, but we created a lot of chances.
“We played most of the game in their box but you have to be clinical and avoid mistakes like the two goals we conceded.”(BBC Sport)
