Enzo Maresca says Manchester City now have the squad depth to challenge Arsenal for the Premier League title after maintaining their perfect start to the season.
City beat Coventry 1-0 on Saturday afternoon to move top of the early-season table. Erling Haaland's first-half header ensured another three points for Maresca's side, who opened the campaign with victories over Bournemouth and Crystal Palace.
New signings bolster City's ranks
The win over Coventry saw Enzo Fernandez, Iliman Ndiaye and Ayyoub Bouaddi all make their debuts after joining City in the summer transfer window. Fernandez cost a joint-Premier League record £125million from Chelsea, while Ndiaye joined from Everton for £65m and Bouaddi from Lille for £81m.
Fernandez came straight into the starting line-up alongside £116m addition Elliot Anderson, underlining the depth City now have, despite losing Rodri, Bernardo Silva, Tijani Reijnders and Nico Gonzalez over the summer. City splashed out £458m on new players to set a new Premier League record for a summer window and give Maresca the firepower he needs to close the gap to Arsenal.
Maresca confident after Community Shield defeat
The Gunners are defending champions having won their first title in 22 years and landed the first blow by thrashing City 3-0 in the Community Shield last month. Maresca is confident that City's transfer business since then has changed the title race.
"If you see since the Community Shield, we played the Community Shield and then Arsenal played two more games [against Coventry and Aston Villa] and they have five changes in every game," he said.
"Two World Cup winners, [Mikel] Merino and [Martin] Zubimendi, two England players, [Eberechi] Eze and [Noni] Madueke, and the other one I don’t remember, I think it was [Piero] Hincapie. In the end, if you want to be there you need options. Arsenal have options. We have options.
"More teams have options but it’s not just us. I’m very happy with the options we have, that is something important for us if you want to compete."
Fernandez debut impresses
City earned around £300m from player sales, with Savio and Omar Marmoush's moves to Tottenham helping fund the deadline-day deals for Fernandez and Ndiaye. Maresca pushed for the signing of Fernandez, having worked with him at Chelsea previously.
Fernandez was supposed to start the Coventry game on the bench, but ended up starting after Nico O'Reilly pulled out in the warm-up with a back complaint.
"It is much more easy with a player that you already share time together because they know exactly what you want," Maresca said after the Coventry game. "We know each other very well and I know how good he is and I know that he is going to help the team win games.
"The reason why Enzo was on the bench was just because he arrived two days ago. I know how frustrating it has been for Enzo in the last two or three weeks so the idea was to give him some minutes but in the end he played from the start and was quite good and I am happy with his performance."
