Manchester City are back in a familiar place on paper, but the job facing Enzo Maresca is not a simple handover from Pep Guardiola. The club finished seven points behind Arsenal last season, after ending up 13 adrift of Liverpool the previous year, and they have spent almost £700m across the last four transfer windows. Six months after leaving Chelsea, Maresca also needed a £17m compensation package to get through the door.

Guardiola's shadow and the scale of the reset

Maresca has been clear about the size of the benchmark he is walking into. Speaking to the Independent, he said: "I would say Guardiola is the best manager of the last 20 or 25 years". He also pointed to "Manchester United and Arsenal’s difficulties after the departures of Sir Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger respectively."

That is the backdrop to a rebuild that still does not look complete. The spending has been huge, but the article's point is not just the size of the bill. It is that City are still carrying the weight of a dominant Guardiola era while trying to reshape the squad around a new manager.

The squad questions Maresca still has to solve

There are also football questions inside the financial ones. The article says Maresca has targeted full-back additions and may need a midfielder if Rodri leaves. Rodri's future is unresolved, with interest from Real Madrid, a Barcelona bid mentioned and Bayern München also in the picture.

Bernardo Silva is another player who sits in that uncertainty, which is part of why this feels bigger than simply replacing Guardiola. City finished second in the 2025 Premier League season with 78 points, so the baseline is still high, but last season's seven-point gap to Arsenal shows there is already ground to recover. In the current 2026 standings, City are listed 15th, a reminder that the context around the squad has shifted sharply.

The real test for Maresca is not whether he can keep City competitive in the abstract. It is whether he can turn a £700m rebuild into a team that still looks like a title-level side, while key decisions on Rodri and Bernardo Silva remain open. City are still in the market for fixes, and the next few months will tell us whether this squad has become more settled or just more expensive.

Written by Jack Mercer with AI-assisted research, cross-checked against 1 outlet. How we work →