Man City 1-0 Coventry: New £125m man Enzo Fernandez takes first step towards paying off his price tag, Rayan Cherki strengthens his claim to be Enzo Maresca's key creative spark - and the flaws the narrow win exposed

A late call, a great ball, and one small step towards paying off the most baffling transfer fee of the window. Those hoping for Enzo Fernandez to fall flat at Manchester City will have to wait a while longer to land their punches. 

We can state at the outset that the Argentine did not settle this game – that was achieved by the more conventional route of Erling Haaland. 

Nor was Fernandez the best player, because Rayan Cherki seems to hold a standing reservation on that status. 

But in a game that lacked any sustained periods of class from City, Fernandez, the £125million riddle, bedded himself in with a solid contribution and one sublime delivery. 

Relevantly, it was the ball that orchestrated the winning moment after 26 minutes, when he spotted the run of Antoine Semenyo, processed the space behind Jay Dasilva, and through a split-second judgement was able to shape the two factors into a high-quality, game-changing pass. 

From there, Semenyo nailed the cross and Haaland did what Haaland does, but the art had been supplied by a man who most neutrals might prefer to despise. Presumably, he won’t wait too long to offer a reminder of the infuriating aspects he showed at Chelsea, and at the World Cup, but this was a strong start. 

And a strange one, too, given Fernandez was listed among Enzo Maresca’s substitutes, only to be promoted to the XI when Nico O’Reilly tweaked his back in the warm-up.

In truth, that setback wasn’t the only hurdle Maresca faced. Sure, this was City’s third win in three, but it was also messy, wasteful, and far closer than anyone expected. Coventry had good chances in both halves.

Credit there to Frank Lampard – each of his substitutions after the break enhanced Coventry’s side, which might have been worth something had Gianluigi Donnarumma not made a string of saves, but it is hard to escape their record. At three defeats from three, they are the mirror to City in every way.

Maresca, therefore, won’t read volumes into this beyond the result, and the broader excitement elicited whenever Cherki takes possession. He neither scored nor assisted here, but with two of each preceding another menacing contribution, his confidence is glowing in fluorescent shades, especially when he is permitted to play that advanced role behind Haaland.

To that end, Fernandez’s arrival ought to help. The risk is that they might clog each other’s space around the box, but the early signs in this fixtures was of a fast-settling relationship. They worked well together.

Other praise might be hard to find for Maresca. Indeed, the O’Reilly scenario was a prelude to 10 minutes of sheer calamity at the start of the game.

That messy little stretch commenced when Donnarumma was forced to hack a clearance off the line after allowing an Abdukodir Khusanov backpass to squirm under his boot. Tone set, Semenyo then day-dreamed into a square ball across goal that was cut out by Taiwo Awoniyi and offered a one-on-one.

Fortuitously for Semenyo, Awoniyi dragged his finish wide, but City were nervy, uneasy, unsure, which carried into the final act of the sequence, when Marc Guehi attempted a basic header back to Donnarumma and bobbled it straight out for a corner. Ugly stuff.

But it’s City. And it’s Coventry. All of which meant it stabilised. The corrections started with Haaland, who had a snapshot saved by Carl Rushworth, and then Cherki, who bluffed Bobby Thomas into a lunge and then fired against the post.

Cherki’s confidence in those tight spaces has been a theme of these opening games, but it is worth noting that it was Fernandez who gave him the opportunity. The Argentine’s next spell was to set Semenyo loose to assist Haaland’s header for 1-0.

This being Fernandez, we should also state there had already been one entirely unnecessary shoulder barge on Rushworth inside the first two minutes and he was later bullied to the ground by Ephron Mason-Clark after over-elaborating in midfield - as ever, he brings the good and bad.

But that applied to City as a whole - their fluctuations across the first half were wild and only marginally less of a concern in the second.

That period started well for Maresca, albeit with a Haaland goal correctly disallowed for offside by Fernandez. The shame in that instance was the nullification of Ferandez’s assist, crafted by a hooked volley across goal, because the technique was sublime.

From there, City invited trouble. The short passes, the urges to go sideways and backwards, are staples of Maresca’s football but also allowed Coventry time to set a shape. Urgency might have killed their threat and yet there was precious little - Iliman Ndiaye had a particularly quiet debut in place of Phil Foden.

Against that inertia, Coventry had scope to push back. When Loum Tchaouna broke clear, they had such a chance, but Donnarumma made the save, and the goalkeeper did so again when Ellis Simms pounced on City’s failure to handle a cross. High balls regularly unsettled Maresca’s defence, but Coventry have not yet scored in the league, so no punishment was forthcoming.