Enzo Maresca has played down the significance of Manchester City moving ahead in the title race after their 5-3 win over Sunderland, insisting it is ‘too early’ in the season. The frantic victory at the Etihad Stadium gave City 15 points from their opening five league matches, three more than Arsenal, who lost at Brighton on Saturday. Maresca was asked about his team being top before the three-week international break.
‘It’s much better to win games,’ Maresca said. ‘In this moment, it’s better to have three points more than less, no doubt. But at the same time, we know that it’s quite early. The international break is good. We can review what we have done and what we can do better, and at the same time, we can relax a little more.’
The match itself was far from comfortable. City twice took the lead in the first half through Enzo Fernández and Rayan Cherki, but Sunderland equalised each time through Brian Brobbey. Antoine Semenyo’s 43rd-minute strike then gave the home side a 3-2 half-time lead. After the break Semenyo scored again to make it 4-2, before Brobbey completed his hat-trick on 59 minutes to reduce the deficit to 4-3. Erling Haaland’s late goal completed the scoring. Brobbey became the first player to score three and finish on the losing side in the Premier League since Roque Santa Cruz in Blackburn’s 5-3 defeat at Wigan in December 2007.
Maresca admitted he would have preferred a tighter game. ‘I prefer to win 1-0 than 5-3 but I expected a very difficult game – I knew how good they are, off the ball, very aggressive,’ he said. ‘I knew it was a difficult game but happy because we found a way to win the game. We scored five. We could have scored probably more goals. So that means that we create enough, but at the same time we need to avoid conceding goals like today. We had four clean sheets in a row and today we conceded three goals.’
Sunderland were left frustrated by an incident at 3-2 when Elliot Anderson appeared to handle in his area but was not penalised. City subsequently launched the attack that created Semenyo’s second goal. Régis Le Bris, the Sunderland manager, said: ‘It was hard to see that as not a handball. It is what it is and we have to accept the decision. It’s hard to comment. It is a defeat, but we are proud of the level of the squad. It is really tight at this level against one of the best teams in Europe. A half chance gets punished, and it’s probably the lesson of the day.’