Maresca rejects title talk after City move top with 5-3 Etihad win
Enzo Maresca dismissed talk of a title push after Manchester City moved to the top of the Premier League table with a 5-3 victory over Sunderland at the Etihad Stadium on Sunday.
The win gave City 15 points from their opening five league matches, three more than Arsenal after the champions lost at Brighton on Saturday. Maresca, asked about his team being top before the three-week international break, said: "It’s much better to win games," he 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."
On the match, Maresca said: "I prefer to win 1-0 than 5-3 but expected a very difficult game – I knew how good they are, off the ball, very aggressive. 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."
City twice took the lead in the first half through Enzo Fernández and Rayan Cherki, but Sunderland responded on each occasion through Brian Brobbey before Antoine Semenyo’s 43rd-minute strike gave the home side a 3-2 lead at the interval.
After the break Semenyo’s second made it 4-2, Brobbey completed his hat-trick to reduce the deficit to 4-3 on 59 minutes, and Erling Haaland’s late strike completed the scoring. Brobbey became the first player to score three and be on the losing side in the Premier League since Roque Santa Cruz in Blackburn’s 5-3 loss at Wigan in December 2007.
At 3-2 Elliot Anderson appeared to handle in his area but was not penalised and City then launched the attack that created Semenyo’s second. Sunderland manager Régis Le Bris 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’s 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."
City will now enter the three-week international break top of the table on 15 points from five matches.