Enzo Maresca’s first ten Premier League games at Man City have followed almost the same path as Pep Guardiola’s in 2016, but the one thing that rescued Guardiola back then is not available to the Italian.
Ten league games in, Enzo Maresca has 21 points from seven wins and three defeats. A perfect start, then three losses in a row, the last of them at the City Ground before the international break.
That looks alarming on its own. Put it next to Guardiola’s first season and it looks a lot more familiar.
How does Maresca’s start compare with Guardiola’s?
Guardiola won his first six league games at City, went three without a win, and then won the tenth. That gave him two more points than Maresca has now, and the shape of the run is close to identical.
| First 10 league games | Pep Guardiola (2016) | Enzo Maresca (2026) |
|---|---|---|
| Opening run | Won the first six | Won the first seven |
| The wobble | Three without a win | Three defeats in a row |
| Game ten | A win | A defeat |
| Points | 23 | 21 |
Both starts promised a lot and both hid cracks that were quickly found out. There have been big derby wins and worrying collapses away from home, and the same old question about whether this style of football can win the Premier League.
So the gloom after Nottingham Forest picked City apart is a bit overdone. Maresca is only months into the job, and nothing in this side looks so broken that it can’t be fixed.
He knew the comparison was coming
Maresca, who managed Leicester and Chelsea before taking the City job, saw this coming. Speaking to reporters in Seoul on the summer tour, he accepted the Guardiola yardstick would arrive almost straight away: “It’s something that I know, after 10 games, if we’ve got 10 points, 20 points, 30 points. People will be comparing it to Pep after 10 games. But it’s something, it is what it is. It doesn’t put pressure on me.”
He went further on the man he replaced: “I’ve said many times while I was at Leicester or Chelsea, he’s the best manager in the world over the last 15 or 20 years. When he started in Spain, everyone wanted to play like Barcelona, he moved to Germany everyone wanted to play like Bayern, he comes to England and everyone wants to play like City. Someone asked me if it’s the impossible job to follow him, maybe but at the same time it’s a privilege.”
Ten games in, the comparison has arrived exactly on schedule.
Why the 2017 fix isn’t there for Maresca
This is where the two stories split. Guardiola did spend in his first year, but most of that season was about finding out who could and couldn’t play his way. The real change came in the summer of 2017, when a big part of the squad was moved on and Bernardo Silva, Ederson and Kyle Walker arrived. That one window turned City into one of the best sides English football has seen.
Maresca has already had his version of it. Most of the players signed in the previous two years who were no longer seen as part of the future, Omar Marmoush, Nico Gonzalez and Tijjani Reijnders among them, have gone. Their sales helped pay for a huge 2026 spend on players meant to be the base of Maresca’s City.
That group runs from the record buys, Elliot Anderson and Enzo Fernandez, to Iliman Ndiaye and Ayyoub Bouaddi. We broke down what Anderson brings in our Elliot Anderson scouting report, while the teenager’s place in the side is still a puzzle, as the Ayyoub Bouaddi scouting report explains.
No second rebuild next summer
Even if City’s appeal in the 115 charges case goes their way, it is very hard to see them ripping the squad up again next summer if this doesn’t work. That money has been spent, and these are the players.
So Guardiola’s trump card, a second window to bring in the players his system needed, simply isn’t in Maresca’s hand.
Can Maresca fix Man City with what he has?
He has to. The break is a chance to find answers on the training pitch rather than on a list of January targets, whether that is settling the back four that keeps changing in front of Gianluigi Donnarumma (Steph Houghton’s criticism of Maresca’s changes still stands) or finding the right midfield mix around Anderson.
There have been enough good signs in the opening months to believe he can do it, and City would not have hired him if they thought otherwise.
Verdict: the Pep comparison helps Maresca more than it hurts
We think the numbers are kinder to Maresca than the mood. Two points behind Guardiola at the same stage is no disaster, and his start had the same cracks.
The worry is the route out. Guardiola fixed his wobble with a transfer window, and Maresca has to fix his with coaching. If the players bought this year are as good as City believe, he can. If they aren’t, there is no 2017 waiting for him, and that is the real difference between the two starts.
