Enzo Maresca rues ‘silly’ errors after Manchester City defeat against Brighton

Matheus Nunes mistake lets in Yasin Ayari for winner

Maresca: ‘We are conceding silly goals that we can avoid’

Enzo Maresca said “silly goals” and individual errors are costing Manchester City after Matheus Nunes’ mistake allowed Yasin Ayari to score Brighton’s winner in Saturday’s 1-0 victory here. Ayari’s strike was made possible after Nunes, City’s right-back, missed Diego Gómez’s cross from the right, so the ball could come back across goal via Maxim De Cuyper.

The 2-1 loss at Aston Villa came from Gianluigi Donnarumma allowing Nicolas Jackson’s long-range winner to squeeze under his body.

“Sometimes it happens,” said Maresca. “Unfortunately, it is happening for our players, but it is part of football, it happens many times against us, we need to analyse, understand what we can do better and try to move on.

“We are the second team in terms of scoring in the Premier League, but we are conceding silly goals that we can avoid and hopefully we can avoid in the next game.

“It is a very similar feeling we had after the Aston Villa game – unfortunately we created enough to get some points but we didn’t score. At the moment it is like this. We did enough to deserve something. We need to move on and try to win games. For sure we are not happy.”

While Maresca said he had not seen the free-kick awarded against Elliot Anderson to decide if this was fair, Brighton’s victory takes them to 19 points, two behind City, who are the leaders before Arsenal’s trip to Liverpool on Sunday.

Fabian Hürzeler was delighted his players had changed the feeling of Wednesday’s Carabao Cup penalty shootout loss to City. “Every morning you can wake up and decide if you’re disappointed by something you cannot change or set the tone,” he said. “Stand up and have the belief that you’ll have a different feeling. It was brutal [the cup defeat]. We promised ourselves that we won’t have the same feeling.

“We want to be satisfied. We created energy, positivity, the next day. You need this. We saw Saturday as an opportunity to come back stronger. This was the approach and how the players stuck together and built the connection through the four days is really impressive.”

Hürzeler was asked what is possible for Brighton this season. “The only thing we’re focused on is that we are in a big process, a process of analysing the game. Then try to prepare for Getafe [on Thursday], a big challenge.”