Rico Lewis sends Enzo Maresca message over Man City future

Rico Lewis is hoping his performances will convince Enzo Maresca that he deserves a place in the Manchester City squad this season. The academy graduate did not feature much last year under Pep Guardiola and doubts remain over his long-term future at the club with a month of the transfer window left.Lewis told the Manchester Evening News last month that he needs to play regularly this season, and it remains to be seen whether City can offer that. Nottingham Forest were interested in buying the 21-year-old last summer, and there has been interest from Premier League clubs again that could see a sale in the next month.

Fresh start after Guardiola's departure

Guardiola's exit has given Lewis a fresh opportunity. He knows Maresca from the season he broke into the first team while City won the Treble, and has travelled as one of the senior players for three pre-season friendlies in Asia while many of the squad are still on holiday after the World Cup.Asked about his future after the friendly defeat to Inter in Hong Kong, Lewis could not say whether he will stay at the Etihad this season but hopes his quality is doing the talking. "It's a difficult question to answer, you never know what can happen. We'll see," he said. "It's up to the manager and to me to perform when I get the chances. Hopefully I've shown that I can do well and in the future I need to continue to do that."

Comfortable in midfield

Maresca was happy to see some of his new ideas played out in the first friendly, and Lewis looked more comfortable as the game wore on and he stayed in midfield rather than pushing up from right-back. He is more comfortable with less shifting to do, but is happiest playing in midfield."Obviously with inverting there's more running. That's the bottom line of it, there's more running and staying in there," he said. "I feel comfortable in there. Obviously there's slightly different elements to the pressing and stuff like that, but all in all it's pretty similar so I’m comfortable either way.""I feel like I can do both sides of the game more there and I feel I can control the game more from that kind of position."

Praise for Maresca

Lewis also backed the new manager's credentials. "We knew [Enzo] was good, we had him in the Treble season, we knew he was a top coach. And we saw him when he went away with different teams that he could do well so it's not a surprise, but he's definitely an intelligent manager with a strong idea, and that's an important thing to have."