Manchester City spent £320million on overhauling their midfield over the summer. In doing so, they twice broke their own transfer record. This marked the most aggressive focus on a specific need since the lavish outlay on full backs nine years ago.

All signed weeks before the independent commission’s guilty verdicts were announced, Elliot Anderson, Enzo Fernandez and Ayyoub Bouaddi heralded a new era in the City engine room. More energy, vibrancy, dynamism.

Two of them were ready-made replacements for Rodri and Bernardo Silva, with Bouaddi only 18 at the time and purchased as a potential superstar after shooting to global prominence at the World Cup. 

But as Enzo Maresca heads into the second international break of the season on the back of three consecutive Premier League defeats, his midfield is the primary area of concern. And has been for a while.

A big fortnight lies in store for City’s manager, whose midfield has been wide open all year. Fine when outscoring opponents – see the 5-3 victory over Sunderland – and it makes for great entertainment yet an obvious gaping chasm when the goals dry up slightly. 

The balance has not felt right and Maresca, who has gently batted away persistent questions about the midfield for weeks, must know this.

While studying tapes of all three defeats over the coming days, before City come back after the internationals to host Fulham and then go to Arsenal, he needs to determine a plan moving forward and that will include some tough decisions on individuals and shapes.

Nottingham Forest could have driven a bus through the middle of the park on Saturday night, two goals from counter-attacking situations engineered between the width of the centre circle. Twice the ostensible holding midfielder Anderson tried to nick possession, beaten to it, and City were turned around.

Noises coming from the dressing room suggest that Anderson is effectively being asked to operate as both a No6 and No8 when picked as the deepest of the three, to go and join play high up the pitch. That is Maresca leaning into the England international’s Action Man, everything to everyone style. That also relies on somebody covering for him. 

That somebody does not exist in this current setup, Fernandez always too high and wide elsewhere.

So when they lose duels as happened at the City Ground, something the manager openly bemoaned, City are not stable enough to recover.

Club analysts have sat down with Anderson to go over video clips on how best to follow these instructions to the benefit of the team. Watching him, it’s hard not to conclude that this is a quality midfielder being asked to do too much as a single deep midfielder. 

It will produce moments of sheer class – that lung-busting run up the right in Leipzig on Wednesday that bore hallmarks of Kevin De Bruyne, a perfect cross for Erling Haaland’s winner – while also leaving the defence exposed.

An exposed defence lends itself to a heightened chance of individual errors, plenty of those around at the moment, and it was noticeable at Forest that the opening goal came from uncertainty in possession. Josko Gvardiol made the error, eased off the ball by eventual goalscorer Jair Cunha, but the plan cannot be to have the left back with his back to goal and no viable passing options.

When Marc Guehi’s ball went into Gvardiol, Anderson was higher and wider on the right – deep in conversation with Abdukodir Khusanov about how they’d failed to move possession well enough earlier in the sequence – and Rayan Cherki was belatedly trotting back to offer himself. 

Fernandez never once enters the frame, even when Cunha is in the box and subsequently wheeling away in celebration. Maresca rejected the suggestion that there is an issue with the team’s build-up on Saturday night.

What is clear though is that there is not yet that balance, that this is not yet a unit. Maresca moved to include Bouaddi with Anderson and Fernandez against Brighton – a one-goal defeat – but that acted as detrimental to creativity. If nothing else, Brighton proved that City require either Cherki or Phil Foden on the pitch at all times.

Over the past two games, Fernandez has lurked more menacingly at the back post, offering an additional goal threat than just relying on Haaland. That ghosting late run saw him score in Leipzig but for a joint-British record £125million needs to offer so much more. There will be growing calls for Bouaddi’s inclusion as a genuine deep-lying midfielder but it’s unlikely that the teenager can manage the league’s physicality as a single pivot.

The Moroccan has more chance of stamping his authority when alongside somebody else, dovetailing with an Anderson as a two. That leaves Fernandez, whose barnstorming league debut at Old Trafford feels like a long time ago now. 

To persist with him, he either dislodges Cherki as the No10 on the promise of far more goals or Maresca drops him back into a more conventional role that allows Anderson to flourish properly.

Something has to give because the unevenness of City’s three is giving the rest of the team uncomfortable jitters.