Man City fans finally got the midfield they had been asking for on Saturday, and it lasted just 55 minutes.
Enzo Maresca named Ayyoub Bouaddi, Elliot Anderson and Enzo Fernandez together, and Man City lost 1-0 at the Etihad to Brighton. After seven wins from seven to start the league season, that is now two Premier League defeats on the bounce.
Yet Maresca was having none of the idea that he got it wrong. He called the selection a good idea, pointed to the chances his side created and asked everyone to move on.
The numbers give him some cover: 21 shots to Brighton’s seven and 1.92 expected goals. The early stages give him rather less.
Did Maresca’s £325m midfield backfire against Brighton?
In the opening stages, yes. This was the trio supporters had been calling for since the three of them arrived in the summer, a £325m group that looked thrilling for 45 minutes against Paris Saint-Germain. It came as one of 10 changes from the midweek shootout win, with Bouaddi the only man keeping his place and getting just his second Premier League start.
Bouaddi sat alongside Anderson with Fernandez pushed further on, which meant Rayan Cherki, a leader in the cup tie on Wednesday, dropped to the bench. Instead of control, City got chaos. Bouaddi and Fernandez kept charging high into the same spaces and Anderson was left trying to hold back a Brighton side who overran them early on.
Cherki replaced Bouaddi on 55 minutes and City immediately looked sharper. Nico O’Reilly came on for Fernandez nine minutes later, on an afternoon when almost nothing the Argentine tried came off. Anderson was the exception. He looked a level above everyone else on the pitch, in and out of possession.
Maresca defended his thinking afterwards. “I expected a physical game. Analysing them, watching them they are aggressive man-to-man,” he said. “I think it was a good idea to start with three physical midfielders and I was also thinking about last 20-30 minutes to refresh with Rayan, Allan, Phil. In this moment it is like this and we need just to move on.”
That last-half-hour plan is the telling part. Cherki was needed with 35 minutes left, while Phil Foden and Allan did not get on until the 79th minute.
How one lapse settled Man City 0-1 Brighton
The only goal came in the 11th minute. Diego Gomez swung a cross to the far post from the right, Matheus Nunes failed to deal with it, and the ball struck Maxim De Cuyper and sat up for Yasin Ayari, unmarked in the middle of the goal. He swept it home from close range.
It was a poor moment for a full-back only just back from a minor injury, though Nunes did make some useful runs going forward later on. It also gave Brighton revenge for going out of the cup on penalties three days earlier, along with a first away win over City at the 19th attempt.
Fabian Hurzeler is now unbeaten in all five of his Premier League meetings with City, with three wins and two draws. His side defended with everyone they had once they were ahead, and still carried a threat on the counter.
Where did 21 shots go?
Mostly into the hands of Bart Verbruggen. He made seven saves, kept his sixth clean sheet in nine league games, more than any other goalkeeper in the division, and ended City’s 24-game scoring run in the top flight at the Etihad. Nobody had stopped them scoring at home in the league since Tottenham’s 2-0 win in August 2025.
Not all of it was down to him. Iliman Ndiaye headed wide from an Anderson cross on 22 minutes, the best chance City had before the break, then had a shot from a tight angle palmed onto the bar by Verbruggen on 52. A perfectly weighted Cherki pass sent Nunes through on 62, and the Dutchman got a strong right hand to that as well.
Jeremy Doku was dangerous right up to the final ball, which is the problem. Erling Haaland had half-chances without ever really getting involved, and in the second minute of stoppage time, with O’Reilly nodding one down to him in the area, he stepped over it. He had scored in four straight games against Brighton without winning, and there was no fifth.
Can Maresca stop the silly goals?
This is the bigger worry. A week ago at Villa Park it was Marc Guehi and Gianluigi Donnarumma, and Maresca had to back his centre-back over that run of errors days later. Guehi was on the bench this time, and the mistake simply came from someone else. Donnarumma’s passing out from the back also kept inviting Brighton on.
City have now conceded 12 goals in their last six games in all competitions and gone six without a clean sheet, something that had not happened since January and February 2025. This was also their first home league defeat of the season, and they have not lost back-to-back league games since August 2025.
Maresca knows it. “In this moment we are conceding silly goals that we can avoid and hopefully we can avoid in the next game,” he said. “For sure we are not happy. The players, me the coaching staff, no one is happy when we lose games at all, for sure, but we were aware we were not going to win all the games so these kind of moments arrive.”
What does this do to the title race?
City are still top, but only for now. Brighton have closed to within two points in third, three clear of Chelsea, and Arsenal go above City if they avoid defeat at Anfield on Sunday.
There is no time to dwell on it either. RB Leipzig away in the Champions League comes on Wednesday, followed by a trip to Nottingham Forest, Anderson’s old club, on November 7. Fulham and then Arsenal wait after the international break.
Anderson was blunt enough about what comes next. “We’re all disappointed. Not good enough, we don’t want to be losing games but we’ve got to stick together,” he said. “We’ve had a great start to the season, two disappointing results now but we have to stick together.”
Verdict: Man City 0-1 Brighton shouldn’t kill this midfield, but it needs a rethink
I wouldn’t bin the idea after one afternoon. Anderson was excellent, Bouaddi had good moments despite wandering out of position, and this was only their first league start as a trio. City also created enough to win, as Anderson said himself: “on another day we put three or four away.”
What needs fixing is the shape around Anderson. Two runners getting in each other’s way leaves one man doing the work of three, and a side as aggressive as Brighton will find that gap every time. Against the best teams, which is exactly who this midfield was meant for, Maresca needs one of them to stay put. He also needs to stop gifting goals, because the best midfield in the world can’t solve that.
