Enzo Maresca ignored previous Man City success during Aston Villa defeat

06:00, 25 Oct 2026Updated 08:22, 25 Oct 2026

Manchester City have not been behind often during Enzo Maresca's tenure with the Blues. However, when they are, Maresca has not pulled his punches. Earlier this month, City found themselves 3-0 down to Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League and Maresca made a triple change.

That shifted the momentum shifted in favour of the Blues. On Saturday, Maresca acted again. City reacted well to going a goal down early against Aston Villa. With a bit more luck, Iliman Ndiaye would have equalised, but the post denied him.

Maresca made a double substitution at the break. Like against PSG, Cherki was a casualty of the ruthless changes. But instead of introducing Ayyoub Bouaddi, as happened at the Etihad Stadium, on came Phil Foden. On paper, that decision made sense. Eyebrows were raised slightly when Foden did not keep his spot after his midweek hat-trick.

However, bringing on a creative midfielder didn't solve the issue City were grappling with. Elliot Anderson and Enzo Fernandez have been a superb partnership in midfield. Against Manchester United and Liverpool, they were faultless. But like against the Parisians, they were losing the midfield battle in a game that was frantic, end to end and with space a plenty in the middle of the park.

City needed to add an extra body in the centre to help them win those all-important midfield duels. Bouaddi would have offered that yet, surprisingly, he was left on the bench.

In his post-match press conference, Maresca was asked to explain his substitutions, particularly in regards to Bouaddi. "I think against PSG it was a bit different," he said.

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"Today we needed a technical midfielder, that's why Rayan was out and Phil was inside. No doubt that Ayyoub is going to help us. Today Enzo and Elliot both had a very good game and we have so many games that Ayyoub is going to play minutes."

Maresca has the Pep Guardiola trope whereby you will be hard-pressed to hear him criticise his players after a defeat. But the City boss did admit that his team will have to learn lessons from Saturday's defeat.

That learning curve must now extend to the decision to overlook Bouaddi. Maresca's drastic changes are not always going to work as dramatically as they did against PSG, but ignoring one of the key factors from that impressive second half response earlier this month, must go down as a mistake.

Jack Flintham is a Sport Central Audience Writer at Reach PLC, contributing mainly to the Manchester Evening News. Covering mostly football, particularly Manchester United and Manchester City, his work can also be found in the Daily Mirror, Daily Express, Daily Star Football.London, Liverpool Echo and Leeds Live. Before joining the central sports team, Jack worked exclusively on the Manchester Evening News sports desk and was also a SEO Writer for Lincolnshire Live. Jack has been with Reach PLC since December 2021.

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