{"id":823422,"date":"2026-08-23T19:08:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-23T19:08:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/823422\/"},"modified":"2026-08-23T19:08:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-23T19:08:09","slug":"man-city-2-1-bournemouth-enzo-marescas-masterstroke-to-play-marc-guehi-in-midfield","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/823422\/","title":{"rendered":"Man City 2-1 Bournemouth: Enzo Maresca’s masterstroke to play Marc Guehi in midfield"},"content":{"rendered":"

Enzo Maresca might have been expected to keep his head down and not make any curious team selections in his first Premier League game in-charge of Manchester City<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Instead, he made the surprising decision to field Marc Guehi in a holding role and, eventually, the gamble paid off.<\/p>\n

All the heat prior to kick-off had been on rivals Manchester United<\/a> and free-spending Tottenham<\/a> following their demoralising opening game defeats but for 84 minutes on Sunday, that unwanted focus looked set to shift to Etihad Stadium.<\/p>\n

City had suffered a chastening 3-0 defeat by champions Arsenal<\/a> in the Community Shield last Sunday and were heading towards back-to-back defeats to start the season.<\/p>\n

But a late rescue act courtesy of a towering header from Guehi – who all the attention was on – and Josko Gvardiol’s cool finish salvaged an unlikely comeback victory against Bournemouth<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Eyebrows were raised before kick-off when Maresca decided to field a team consisting of six players that can play as defenders, but the serious questions cropped up during the warm-up.<\/p>\n

With the back four going through their routines with a City coach, it appeared England centre-back Guehi would be deployed as holding midfielder. When referee Jarred Gillett blew his whistle to start proceedings, it became clear that this was the reality.<\/p>\n

But instead of the story being about Guehi being played out of position, the former Crystal Palace<\/a> skipper scored to help switch the narrative to it being an ingenious move from the new manager.<\/p>\n

Pundits and supporters were taken aback by the switch in position and so too was the player himself.<\/p>\n

Guehi told Sky Sports: “It was just an idea the manager had, we worked on it in the week. We’re trying different things, trying different solutions for the team.<\/p>\n

“I’m glad today it paid off in the end.”<\/p>\n

He also told BBC Sport he had not played in midfield too often, adding: “I enjoyed it simply because I got so much help from so many people. When you have that you feel comfortable to just go out and play and do what you can for the team.”<\/p>\n

Boss Maresca told BBC Match of the Day: “Marc Guehi has never played as a midfielder, today he was very good, so I am happy with the effort from the players.<\/p>\n

“Sometimes you visualise things. I know Marc from Palace and I always thought he could play as a midfielder because he is very good. So we tried it for a few days and I think he was quite good.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Enzo Maresca might have been expected to keep his head down and not make any curious team selections…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":823423,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[403,99],"class_list":["post-823422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/823422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=823422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/823422\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/823423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=823422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=823422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=823422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}