Maresca: The players are close to understanding my plans

Enzo Maresca says his Manchester City squad are working hard to learn exactly how he wants his team to play.

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The Italian took charge of City this summer at the start of a period of significant change which will culminate in the end of the summer transfer window next Tuesday.

His side got off the mark in the Premier League with victory over Bournemouth last week and now head to Crystal Palace this Friday for our first away test.

Ahead of that game, Maresca says his players aren’t far from knowing his tactics inside out.

“I think we are quite close,” he said in Thursday’s press conference.

“Against Bournemouth in terms of pressing we recovered 76% of the ball, that is a fantastic result. 76% of pressing recover the ball.

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“It happens that once or twice you don’t [recover the ball] and they create two chances. It’s normal - its football.

“I think the players they are understanding in the way we want to defend and press.”

City had to come from a goal down against Bournemouth after Marcus Tavernier opened the scoring midway through the first half.

Late goals from Marc Guéhi and Joško Gvardiol earned the Blues a deserved win.

Maresca says he’s not concerned that his side fell behind in that clash.

“It’s football, in the end you can’t control everything. But it’s much better if you can recover 76 per cent of the ball rather than 50 per cent,” he said.

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“It means you give less chances to the opposition. But again you cannot control everything - it can happen at set pieces or at any moment.”

As well as a long transfer window, the boss has had to deal with the disruptive impact of a World Cup.

He admits that has provided some difficulties with his planning, but that he is working to find the solution on a game-by-game basis.

“It’s complicated because you want to start new things and new concepts with a new manager even if there are similarities with the previous one,” he said.

“At the end all managers and all players are different. It has been a little bit complicated because some players arrive late and now with transfers.

“That’s why Marc Guéhi [in midfield] was a solution and tomorrow there might be another solution.

“It’s my duty and my job to find a solution and try to help the players to win games. In the end they are the ones on the pitch to try to win the game.”

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With just a few days left in the transfer window, the boss also revealed the ideal size of the squad he’d like to work with.

“I think probably the right idea is to have two players in each position. They need to compete between them,” he said.

“The standard is higher when they can compete for every game. So for me the ideal situation is to have two players in each position.

“And then we have Ryan McAidoo with us, Samba, Kaden [Braithwaite] with us so I think having three or four Academy players with us is enough.

“At the moment we have 21, 22 players and that can be the right number.

“In this moment we have 3 or 4 in this number who are Academy players, so thinking we are playing 60, maybe 65 games this season we probably need more numbers.”

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