Manchester City’s winning streak in the Premier League came to an end on Saturday as Aston Villa won 2-1 at Villa Park – and there were some concerning aspects of the performance for Enzo Maresca to sink his teeth into.

Manchester City enjoyed a good win in the week over AEK Athens in the Champions League. But this game was always going to be much harder.

City’s recent record at Villa Park isn’t very good, and in recent weeks Villa have been showing big improvements under Unai Emery.

And in the end, City watched their perfect record fall and Enzo Maresca will have been alarmed by a few things that happened during the game.

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Give us your reaction as Man City lose their first Premier League game of the season at Aston Villa… 👇

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Aston Villa showed how to frustrate Man City

Games at Villa Park were somewhat chastening for Pep Guardiola during his time at City, and now Maresca has had a taste of how difficult games can be there.

Ultimately, Villa showed the kind of energy that many other sides haven’t shown against City so far this season. Indeed, Emery said after the game (via Telegraph): “We were very motivated and Manchester City is the best team in the world, so this is the level. This year we started so poorly and we needed time to understand how we improve. The players showed the capacity to retrieve the level we’ve had over the last few years.”

Post-match statistics showed that Villa covered more distance collectively than City (111.8km vs 110.8km), and it was clear to see that Emery’s side were working their socks off throughout. The midfield of John McGinn, Joao Gomes and Boubacar Kamara made 21 defensive actions between them (via Sofascore).

Emery was also smart with his substitutions. As City were gaining more control in the second-half, he introduced Ibrahim Mbaye, who made an instant impact to set up Nicolas Jackson for his second goal.

The overall effort from Villa made life difficult for City and frustration crept into Maresca’s side towards the end. And that frustration boiled over for some, such as Rico Lewis scrapping with Emiliano Buendia and the home bench in stoppage time.

But this defeat to Villa perhaps isn’t as disastrous as it seems. Ultimately, the goals came from two mistakes and sometimes you just can’t account for that. Marc Guehi and Gianluigi Donnarumma will be disappointed with their roles.

There’s a fine line between identifying a genuine weakness and overreacting to one defeat. City did enough to take something from Villa Park, registering seven shots on target, while the hosts managed just two.

However, that attacking dominance counted for little when individual errors proved costly at the other end. For Maresca, the challenge is to ensure that City’s attacking ambition doesn’t come at the expense of defensive reliability.

City’s defending has to improve

Without a doubt, this certainly is one area of concern for Maresca.

While mistakes can happen to anyone, the defending from City at times this season just hasn’t been good enough, and thankfully for the most part, the attack has been able to deliver. But it has papered over the cracks.

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jonathan.gorrie

Guehi hasn’t been great has he? Never convinced by the GK either

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City have kept just two clean sheets in the league so far, with one of those coming against newly promoted Coventry City amid a poor run of form, and against Liverpool, who went down to 10 men.

None of the centre-backs have been in good form up to this point and that will need to change relatively soon if City are going to stay top of the pile.

Predictability in the final third

It seems a little harsh to be putting City’s attack under the microscope, but arguably at times there has been a bit too much predictability in the final third.

Jeremy Doku tends to mostly play from the left side and everyone knows his favourite move by now, which is to cut inside with his drop of the shoulder and jink.

This was noticed by one member of our TalkingPoints community, and many more on social media.

Against Villa, he was wasteful on the ball at times, and completed 27/36 (75%) passes. None of these categorised as ‘key’ and none of his three attempted crosses were successful.

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john.haigh

For a long time players/teams just stood watching Doku’s predictable “jinking”. After Jacquet bundled him off the ball, I notice other teams & now Aston Villa did the same and he became ineffectual. Took to falling down for no reason. This season is not going to be cut & dried for any team.

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Rayan Cherki was another who had a poor game on Saturday. Many have eulogised over the Frenchman this season and undoubtedly he’s had some wonderful moments and great performances. But there have also been instances of him being taken off at half-time. It happened against Paris Saint-Germain a few weeks ago, and against Manchester United, and again yesterday.

No need for panic just yet

The defeat to Villa was disappointing. But some perspective is required.

This was Maresca’s first loss of the season and it’s come eight games in. He surely would have taken that knowing he was replacing arguably the greatest manager of all-time.

City also came up against an opponent who have been in the ascendancy of late and have one of the best managers in the world at the helm. Then there is City’s Villa Park record.

This first defeat wasn’t necessarily evidence that Maresca’s system is failing. But it did expose how vulnerable they can be when defensive mistakes, transition defending and inconsistent final-third execution coincide.

So while there are some genuine concerns for Maresca to address in light of this first defeat, there is certainly no reason to believe he won’t sort them.