Elliot Anderson has barely unpacked at the Etihad. Enzo Maresca already suspects there is a different player hiding inside him.

City's manager used his pre-match press conference before the Champions League meeting with RB Leipzig to sketch out a future for Anderson that goes well beyond the holding role he has filled this term.

Signed from Nottingham Forest, the England international has slotted in as though he has been there for years. The 23-year-old has shared top billing with Erling Haaland as City's outstanding performer across the 2026-27 campaign. Any anxiety about the size of the fee has been quietly parked.

That is the present. Maresca is thinking about the next version.

“I think in this moment he is playing in the position which is best for him. That is a holding midfielder like a six.”

Then the manager opened the door.

“No doubt in the future he can be also a number eight and arrive in the box. He has a good pass and also I think he can score some more goals.”

Maresca was careful not to overstate his knowledge of a squad he is still learning. Four months into the job, he is still working out who his players are, and they are still working out him.

“In this moment I’m trying to know all of them in the right way. It’s just been four months so I need to know them better and they need to know me better. It’s on both sides. But for sure he can be a number eight that arrives inside the box.”

A familiar silhouette

There are echoes of Kevin De Bruyne in the way Anderson glides through midfield at times. He will never be that player — nobody will — but the passing instincts are cut from similar cloth. The goals are a different matter. Anderson has the capacity to add them from midfield, and the prospect of him doing so while operating as a number six, particularly with Ayyoub Bouaddi alongside him, is the sort of thought that keeps opposition coaches awake.

Rodri made that exact journey, turning a shielding role into a scoring one. There is no reason Anderson cannot do the same.

For now, City have a monster in midfield. The slightly unnerving part, for everyone else, is that he is still only 23 and his manager thinks the surface has barely been scratched.