Enzo Maresca has reason to be concerned, Man City’s young guns shine and Tosin Adarabioyo has a mistake in him – FIVE THINGS WE LEARNED after Man City beat Chelsea

Erling Haaland enjoyed a fruitful evening at the Ohio Stadium on Saturday night, as the Norwegian striker scored a hat-trick to seal a 4-2 victory for Manchester City against Chelsea. 

The result ensures Pep Guardiola’s side will not leave the United States without a victory, having suffered defeat in their previous three fixtures against Celtic, AC Milan and Barcelona. 

Haaland got the Cityzens off to a flying start, netting a penalty in the opening three minutes of the match, before scoring again just two minutes later. Oscar Bobb would make it 3-0 in the 55th minute before Haaland added another.

While the London club subsequently hit back with both Raheem Sterling and Noni Madueke finding the back of the net, the disappointing performance will have raised alarm bells for Enzo Maresca. 

Here, Mail Sport’s Kieran Gill reflects on five things we learned following Chelsea’s defeat against Man City. 

Alarm bells ringing for Maresca

What was worrying for Chelsea was how their starting line-up was so much stronger than Manchester City’s. Minus Cole Palmer and Marc Cucurella, it was practically their first team. But Maresca’s men were the masters of their own downfall yet again. After conceding goals while playing from the back against Wrexham and Celtic in this pre-season, they found themselves 2-0 down inside five minutes after successive cock-ups. First, Tosin Adarabioyo kicked the ball on to Jack Grealish which led to Erling Haaland winning and scoring a penalty. Then, Moises Caicedo messed up by gifting possession to Haaland so he could get their second. The same theme continued in the second half, sadly, with City scoring twice more. Even if this is only pre-season, Maresca must be concerned with Chelsea facing City in their Premier League opener in two weeks’ time. For their sake, you hope this was them getting those errors out of their system early.

McAtee looking in good form 

James McAtee looked in his element at times, such as when he skinned Mykhailo Mudryk to create one chance in the first half. Chelsea have been tracking the 21-year-old who was previously on loan at Sheffield United for some time. Good player, and Pep Guardiola wanted to use this pre-season to take a closer look at McAtee before deciding on his immediate future. Chelsea have also been linked with Oscar Bobb, who can only have impressed them further here as he scored City’s third goal.

‘Trev deserved better’

There was a Chelsea fan with a homemade banner here which read: ‘Trev deserved better.’ That is in reference to Trevoh Chalobah, left at home as the club work on selling their homegrown central defender. Chelsea could not resist going for Adarabioyo in the summer, given he was available on a free transfer. But the 26-year-old does have a mistake in him. As well as his mistake for City’s opener, he later acted way too casual when chasing back to collect a ball, allowing McAtee to sneak in and steal it before testing Robert Sanchez.

RB Leipzig stars reunite 

Christopher Nkunku and Josko Gvardiol both played together for RB Leipzig and they were having a good catch-up in between their training sessions at the Lower.com Field on Friday. Here at the Ohio Stadium, they went up against one another. But for the first time in this pre-season, Nkunku could not get on the scoresheet. There was one moment when he got the better of Gvardiol by latching on to a brilliant pass from Enzo Fernandez, but City goalkeeper Stefan Ortega refused to let him slip the ball through his legs. Nkunku is not yet fully fit, but says he is working towards it as he hopes for a big season in the Chelsea shirt after last year’s injury-plagued campaign.

Lavia the silver lining on a tough day

One positive for Chelsea is how impressive Romeo Lavia has been in pre-season, often playing a pivotal part in their good play. It will be interesting to see how big of a role he can manage in the next campaign, and it was his brilliant ball in behind for Noni Madueke that completed this 4-2 scoreline. Chelsea flew to Atlanta after this match to use the training facilities there before turning their attention to Real Madrid in Charlotte on Tuesday. It may look like Chelsea picked a strange schedule for their tour of the United States but there is some method to the madness. One, the opponents they have faced have gotten stronger along the way (Wrexham, Celtic, Club America, City, Real). Two, they designed it so that the difference in time zones would reduce as the tour went on, limiting jet lag ahead of their return to London.