Man City 2-1 Bournemouth: Enzo Maresca’s bold call to play Marc Guehi in midfield was Pep Guardiola-esque – it paid off, but the Italian knows they need more signings there for a title challenge, writes JACK GAUGHAN

Part of Manchester City’s insistence on making this place an all-round entertainment venue is to install a zip line from the South Stand to the new one named after Pep Guardiola.

The general public will be able to fly over the pitch from one end of the Etihad to the other. Sounds adrenaline inducing but not quite as thrilling as the footballers balancing a high wire at the weekends instead. On the evidence of Enzo Maresca’s Premier League bow, that is exactly what will be asked of them. No harness strapping these guys in.

Precarious, exhilarating, City wobbled, threatened to fall but ultimately stuck the walk with a bit of flourish and panache. Led by their greatest showman, Rayan Cherki, the engineer of both goals – including a sumptuous slid pass for Josko Gvardiol’s stoppage-time winner.

Word around the team in recent weeks is that the Maresca era is going to be fun. He wants to go about attacking in a slightly different way to what became the norm to stunning success over the past decade and there were more than a few signs of that against a Bournemouth team showing no signs of an Andoni Iraola hangover.

For so long this felt like a false start with a squad that is offering more questions than answers at the moment and with critics circling on the back of last week’s limp defeat by Arsenal. It does feel incomplete now and that will not change until more transfer business is completed.

Three players on the bench – Omar Marmoush, Nico Gonzalez and Jack Grealish – having more than a good chance of leaving before the window shuts is an eye opener. That Marc Guehi started and finished as a sitting midfielder, a role he has only ever performed twice in his professional career, was another.

Yet had City lost this opener, as they appeared destined to do following Marcus Tavernier’s 26th-minute goal, laying bare their defensive issues on the break, then Guehi would not have been the reason. Not even close, to be honest.

The sort of bold call that Maresca’s predecessor, watching from the hills in Catalonia, would have been proud of: a head scratcher, a hotly-debated talking point on the concourse. An easy stick with which to beat the manager had this not ended up in late glory, Guehi having equalised from a Cherki corner six minutes from the end.

Guehi – who also missed a sitter from an Elliot Anderson set piece before the £116million midfielder went off injured – had showed deft feet and a good tactical understanding of the job at hand. Even so, his inclusion in that position showcased the work required before September 2.

With both Gonzalez and Mateo Kovacic on the bench, some will argue that Maresca was sending a message to the board. That doesn’t quite stack up given a £81.4m move for Ayyoub Bouaddi was agreed with Lille hours before kick off. They will need one more in the engine room regardless, Enzo Fernandez at Chelsea the primary target, although that negotiation will be fraught.

‘I always thought Marc could be a good midfielder,’ Maresca said. ‘It’s not linked if we buy new players or not. You need to visualise it and then the last two days we tried him there in training. In the future when we need it, we now know he’s going to be good in there.’ Guehi joked that maybe he will be asked to play up front when he returns to Crystal Palace on Friday night.

Having watched the opening weeks of Maresca’s reign, what has become clear is the need for physicality in central areas. Iraola’s successor, Marco Rose, spoke of preying on mistakes in transitions, something that teams have always targeted in this stadium, and City will want more legs in there. Bouaddi offers that and it will be a prerequisite of whoever follows. There is unlikely to be enough depth without two new faces.

Conversations will be going on in the Manchester pubs about their right-back situation, too. When in midfield, Rico Lewis looked strong and knitted City together from pockets of space. When defending, he let Tavernier go for the goal and almost allowed Justin Kluivert to do exactly the same. Matheus Nunes improved City when coming on.

‘I had the feeling that we had the momentum in the second half,’ Rose said while ruing passive defending that allowed Guehi a free header six yards out and Cherki to later slip Gvardiol in for the sort of riotous finish witnessed so many times before at this ground.

‘It’s never done here. You know what you get. The quality of the team and this stadium. They know how to finish games.’

To finish it they turned to the finisher. On for 27 minutes, Cherki created more chances than anybody. He apparently wasn’t given the nod to start because four others – Erling Haaland, Anderson, Guehi and Nico O’Reilly – are all effectively still in pre-season, according to their manager, and adding a fifth into the mix would negatively tip the scales.

‘Rayan is quite a nice and clear boy, if he is not happy he wants to show it,’ Maresca beamed. ‘If he’s next to me and he’s not happy, you all realise that he is not happy because he is doing anything just to show that he is not happy. I know that he was not happy today but at the end I had to take a decision.

‘His impact was unbelievable and he is that kind of player. What they have to do when they don’t start is do what Rayan did today.’

The next order of business for Maresca, who understandably doesn’t know his best XI – and a large part of that is so many of them being adept in a number of different positions – is to make sure Cherki is on the teamsheet. His sort of ingenuity, speed of thought in tight spaces, is exactly what City require by attempting to utilise a more high-octane way of breaking teams down.

He called this a work in progress and the positive aspect of that is if they keep winning matches while picking a way through then it will put them in a fine position to motor if things ultimately click. ‘It has been a perfect day,’ Maresca said after blowing kisses to the directors’ box when Gvardiol’s goal was ruled legal by VAR. ‘It was quite emotional.’

High stakes and high wires. Maresca’s City could well meet the entertainment criteria his bosses crave.