Manchester City manager Enzo Maresca spoke about the problems in his team after a 3-1 defeat to Nottingham Forest

Enzo Maresca rejected suggestions that the way Manchester City set up left them too exposed after a third straight Premier League defeat. The Blues won their first seven games in the competition but are now six points behind Arsenal after a 3-1 defeat to Nottingham Forest.

Maresca was unhappy with the commitment of his team in a first half where glaring individual errors saw them 2-0 down inside 19 minutes. They never fully recovered, and while the City manager did not want to put blame on individual players he also did not accept some criticism of the collective.

When it was put to him that too much was asked of Elliot Anderson in midfield, he said: "No I think you concede transitions when you lose the ball like the first goal and you concede transitions when you don't win duels."

And, asked if the number of individual mistakes was down to a problem with the system, he said: "I need to give you the same answer. When you lose balls in the way we lost the first goal or when we were attacking and then when we lose the ball, we were not able to win duels or the second ball to recover immediately it's not a matter for three or four. It's about winning duels. That is the first thing you have to do in these kind of games.

"The second and third goal that we conceded in transition are copy and paste. The second one we lost the duels in the middle of the pitch and the third one we lost the duel on the edge of their box. From there, if you make a mistake or don't win duels, you can concede transitions.

"The first half we were not good enough, we didn't match the intensity that these kind of games require. We conceded one, we conceded two, then we tried to react. But most of the time in football when you are 2-0 down it is too late. Second half we started much, much better, we score one, we should have scored probably more and then in transition after we again lost a duel we concede the third goal.

"Today, for me the big mistake has been that we tried to react after we conceded two goals and in football most of the time that is too late."