Manchester City manager Enzo Maresca has publicly criticized his squad’s lack of desire following a crushing 3-1 defeat to Nottingham Forest, marking the club’s third consecutive Premier League loss. The high-profile collapse at the City Ground ended City’s perfect start to the season and exposed a significant drop in intensity against a team fighting relegation. Maresca was blunt in his post-match assessment, stating, “You need desire and intensity … we didn’t match them,” highlighting that the issue was systemic rather than isolated to individual players.
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The match statistics underscored the disparity in effort, with City losing the majority of duels and second-ball possessions in the first half. Jair Cunha capitalized on a dispossessed Josko Gvardiol to open the scoring, while Liam Delap struck twice with muscular surges on the break to secure Forest’s first home league victory since April. Maresca noted that the second and third goals were “copy and paste” errors, resulting from lost duels in the middle of the pitch that allowed Forest to launch rapid counter-attacks.
This defeat extends City’s poor run to three games, following a 2-1 loss to Aston Villa that snapped their 100% record. Maresca emphasized that against a motivated lower-table side, failing to match the opponent’s physicality is unacceptable. “Against this team, that is fighting relegation, if you don’t match them … it’s something we need to understand,” the Italian manager said. As City looks to shake off this slump, the focus now shifts to restoring the competitive edge that defined their opening seven-game winning streak.
Source: The Guardian Sport
