It’s been an intense few weeks for the team who have been hard at work on our pre-season Tour of Asia as Maresca prepares for his first season in charge in Manchester.
Away from the pitch, City have been just as busy having already announced the signings of Elliot Anderson, Gerónimo Rulli, Jeremy Monga and Pierce Charles on top of new contracts for Jérémy Doku, Phil Foden and Joško Gvardiol.
And the boss detailed that he expects a couple more new faces to walk through the doors before 23:00 (UK) on Tuesday 1 September, when all business must be concluded.
“For sure there are things that we need to do. How many, I don’t know,” said Maresca when asked if more is to be done in terms of building his squad ahead of our Community Shield clash with Arsenal on Sunday 16 August.
“Could be one could be two. Depends also if players leave. Now in this moment 48 hours before a final - my first final in this club - I will try to win the first trophy.
“My focus in this moment is not about players that can leave or players that can arrive, the focus for me personally is how we can prepare in the best way for the game and try to win the final.”
Maresca also addressed the speculation surround Rodri, Tijjani Reijnders and Savinho who have all been linked with moves away from the Etihad.
Rodri returned to the City Football Academy today and he said:
“First of all, the transfer window is open, we can buy players and we can sell players, anything can happen.
“I just saw Rodri now in the building, I gave him a big hug, he looks good so we see what happens.”
On Reijnders, he added: ““It is not done officially, we will see in the next hours”, said Maresca.
“I already spoke with him a few times in pre-season. We will see at the end if he is going to leave or going to stay.
“In the way he was playing in the pre-season games I was quite happy with his performances overall.
“I know Tij from Italy, from Milan when he was there, so I know him quite well.
“Probably there he was playing in a different position, he likes to play a little bit more deep than higher on the pitch.
“But again, in the pre-season he was good and now we see what happens and then we decide.”
And on Savinho, he said: “Sav yesterday was not part of the session the reason why he was a little bit ill. We see today, the session is in the afternoon. So we see how he is today and we decide.”
Watch Maresca’s pre Community Shield press conference in full via the video above…
