Maresca dismisses title talk as ‘too early’ after Manchester City take over at the top

Semenyo scored twice in 5-3 victory against Sunderland

Prefer the Guardian on GoogleEnzo Maresca dismissed Manchester City pulling ahead in the title race after Sunday’s 5-3 win over Sunderland, with the manager stating it is “too early” in the season.

The frantic victory at the Etihad Stadium gave City 15 points from their opening five league matches, three more than Arsenal after the champions lost at Brighton on Saturday. Maresca was asked about his team being top before the three-week international break.

“It’s much better to win games,” he said. “In this moment, it’s better to have three points more than less. No doubt. But at the same time, we know that it’s quite early. The international break is good. We can review what we have done and what we can do better, and at the same time, we can relax a little more.”

Of the victory against Sunderland, Maresca said: “I prefer to win 1-0 than 5-3 but I expected a very difficult game – I knew how good they are, off the ball, very aggressive. I knew it was a difficult game but happy because we found a way to win the game.

“We scored five. We could have scored probably more goals. So that means that we create enough, but at the same time we need to avoid conceding goals like today. We had four clean sheets in a row and today we conceded three goals.”

City twice took the lead in the first half after goals from Enzo Fernández and Rayan Cherki, yet each time Sunderland found equalisers from Brian Brobbey, before Antoine Semenyo’s 43rd-minute strike gave the home team a 3-2 half-time lead.

After the break the winger’s second made it 4-2 before Brobbey completed his hat-trick to make it 4-3 on 59 minutes. While Erling Haaland’s late strike completed the scoring Brobbey became the first player to score three and be on the losing side in the Premier League since Roque Santa Cruz in Blackburn’s 5-3 loss at Wigan in December 2007.

At 3-2 Elliot Anderson appeared to handle in his area but was not penalised and City subsequently launched the attack that created Semenyo’s second.

Régis Le Bris, Sunderland’s manager, said: “It was hard to see that as not a handball. It is what it is and we have to accept the decision. It’s hard to comment. It’s a defeat, but we are proud of the level of the squad. It is really tight at this level against one of the best teams in Europe. A half chance gets punished, and it’s probably the lesson of the day.”