Enzo Maresca laments costly errors as Manchester City lose at home to Brighton & Hove Albion to suffer second straight Premier League defeat

Enzo Maresca admitted his Manchester City side must cut out conceding “silly goals” after a 1-0 home defeat to Brighton & Hove Albion marked their first back-to-back Premier League losses since August 2025.

Lack of Real Madrid silverware 'harming' Mbappe's Ballon d'Or chances

Video credit: TNT Sports

Yasin Ayari scored the only goal at the Etihad Stadium after capitalising on an error from Matheus Nunes, condemning City to a second successive league defeat following last weekend’s 2-1 loss at Aston Villa.

Maresca felt his side had created enough opportunities to take something from the game, but acknowledged that individual mistakes were proving costly.

”It’s a very similar feeling to what we had after the Aston Villa game,” the Italian said. ”We created enough to get some points but we didn’t score.

Champions League

Haaland says City need to 'step up'

9 hours ago

”In this moment, it’s like this. I think today we did enough to deserve something but, at this moment we need to move on and try to win games.”

The City boss admitted frustration was growing but insisted his players must respond quickly.

”Sometimes it happens, and unfortunately it’s happening for our players,” he added.

”But it’s part of the game that it sometimes happens. Probably in the last two or three games it happened many times against us. We just need to analyse and understand what we can do better and try to move on.

”At this moment we are probably conceding silly goals that we can avoid and hopefully avoid them in the next game. For sure, we are not happy.

"The players, me, the coaching staff, the club. No one is happy when we lose games at all for sure, but we were aware that we were not going to win all the games so these kind of moments arrive.

”We just have to try to improve things, move on, and try to win games as soon as possible.”

City midfielder Elliot Anderson shared his manager's disappointment, believing the team had created enough chances to win the game but failed to make them count.

“We created a lot of chances. Disappointing to lose. Didn't manage to put chances away. On another day we put three or four away," the England midfielder told Sky Sports.

Anderson also explained how City had tried to stretch Brighton's defence, but admitted their attacking approach had not produced the desired result.

“Three in midfield, man for man and we had the wingers staying high and wide," he said. "We did have the width, but we didn't manage to get the chances away, which is unfortunate."

The midfielder insisted the squad must stick together after suffering consecutive defeats, with a UEFA Champions League fixture against RB Leipzig coming on Wednesday - live with TNT Sports on HBO Max.

“We're all disappointed," he added. "It wasn't good enough. We don't want to lose games, but we've got to stick together. We've had a great start to the season, two disappointing results now, but we have to stick together.

“We have to bounce back for the Champions League game in a couple of days.”

The result was a historic one for Brighton, who claimed their first top-flight victory at the Etihad.

Yasin Ayari is mobbed after scoring the only goal

Image credit: Getty Images

The Seagulls had to withstand sustained pressure after taking the lead, with goalkeeper Bart Verbruggen making a series of important saves to preserve the clean sheet.

Speaking to Sky Sports, Verbruggen described the feeling of securing the landmark victory.

“It's an unbelievable feeling. We went 1-0 up and then to hang tight the last 30-40 minutes, we completely lost control of the game,” he said.

“The manager said this morning we have to dig deep and that's what we did. We're so happy to get over the line and can't wait to celebrate with the boys.”

Brighton boss Fabian Hurzeler was proud of the defensive resilience his players showed against one of the strongest teams in the Premier League.

“We expected a game where we had to suffer, facing one of the best teams in the world,” he told Sky Sports.

“We had to stick together, and we had this feeling that defence wins today. Defence wins you tight games. We had a defensive mindset.

“We faced a lot of adversity during the game and really proud of how my players kept a clean sheet with quality and a bit of luck.”

Download the TNT Sports app on iPhone and Android.

Watch and stream the Premier League, men’s and women’s FA Cups, UEFA Champions League, UEFA Europa League, UEFA Conference League and more live with TNT Sports on HBO Max.

Transfers