Three goals conceded inside the first 15 minutes of Premier League games, and the last two have come in back-to-back defeats. If you want to know why Man City have stopped winning, start with the opening quarter of an hour.
For seven league games this looked like the perfect start for Enzo Maresca at the Etihad: seven wins from seven, plus victories over Porto and AEK Athens in the Champions League. Now Man City have lost at Aston Villa and at home to Brighton, and Arsenal’s 1-0 win at Liverpool on Sunday has taken them past City at the top.
Plenty of the talk since Saturday has been about the £325m midfield that lasted 55 minutes against Brighton. That is fair enough, but the game had already tilted by then. Yasin Ayari scored after 11 minutes, and City spent the remaining 79 chasing it.
How often are Man City conceding early?
Three times in nine league games, and by the end of Saturday’s matches only Ipswich Town and Crystal Palace, with five each, had let in more goals inside the first 15 minutes. That is not where a side with title ambitions wants to be sitting in any table.
| Match | Early goal | Final score |
|---|---|---|
| Man City vs Sunderland, 20 September | Brian Brobbey, 12 minutes | Man City 5-3 Sunderland |
| Aston Villa vs Man City, 24 October | Nicolas Jackson, 6 minutes | Aston Villa 2-1 Man City |
| Man City vs Brighton, 31 October | Yasin Ayari, 11 minutes | Man City 0-1 Brighton |
Sunderland is the one City got away with. Enzo Fernandez put them ahead with a ninth-minute free kick, Brobbey levelled three minutes later, and City simply outscored their visitors in a game that finished 5-3, despite a Brobbey hat-trick.
The other two tell a different story. Marc Guehi’s mistake let in Jackson at Villa Park, and although Erling Haaland equalised after the break, Jackson got his second on the hour. Against Brighton, Matheus Nunes switched off and Ayari couldn’t miss from close range. City never got the goal back.
Is this a new problem for Maresca?
Not really. The Community Shield went the same way, with Arsenal scoring in the opening minute in Cardiff. Back then, Maresca treated it as something to learn from.
He said after that game: “I think a big part of the game was in the first goal we conceded. Unfortunately after 30 seconds we conceded the first one.” He added: “It’s just the beginning, we have many things that we need to do better.”
He is only four months into the job, so some patience is reasonable. But a warning from the Community Shield shouldn’t still need repeating in November, and his language after the Brighton defeat sounded a lot like his language in Cardiff.
“In this moment we are conceding silly goals that we can avoid and hopefully we can avoid in the next game,” he said on Saturday. “We just need to try to improve things, move on and try to win games as soon as possible.”
Why early goals hurt this Man City side so much
Look at what they do to the shape of a game. A side with a lead can afford to be patient and make City come to them. Brighton were disciplined and resolute while City dominated much of the second half, and Bart Verbruggen did the rest with a superb afternoon in goal.
Elliot Anderson, City’s best player on the day, said as much at full-time: “It’s always difficult conceding early. It’s not what you want at home and we just didn’t manage to get that first goal even though we had so many chances.”
He also passed on the message Ruben Dias gave the dressing room, that the squad win together and lose together. Nice sentiment, and probably the right one, but the numbers around it are getting harder to wave away. City have conceded 12 goals in their last six games in all competitions and have gone six without a clean sheet, the first time that has happened since January and February 2025.
Brighton also led twice in the Carabao Cup tie that City won on penalties a few days earlier. So this isn’t only about league games, or about one player’s bad afternoon. Guehi, Nunes and Gianluigi Donnarumma have each been in the frame recently, which tells you it is a wider switching-off issue rather than one obvious name to drop.
Verdict: Leipzig is the worst place to start slowly
Wednesday’s trip gives City very little room for another slow start. As we set out in our RB Leipzig vs Man City preview, Martín Demichelis’ side have scored 19 goals at the Red Bull Arena this season and conceded none. Kick-off is 8pm GMT, and going a goal down there would be a very different problem from going a goal down at home to Sunderland.
We have already picked the XI we expect Maresca to send out, but personnel is only half of it. Nottingham Forest follow at the weekend, so a third straight league game without a win is also on the table if nothing changes.
For us, this is the most fixable problem Maresca has. Nobody needs a new system or a January signing to concentrate for the first 15 minutes. City are still creating chances, and they had the better of them against both Villa and Brighton. Stop giving teams a head start, and a lot of the noise around this team goes away quickly.
