With Pep Guardiola stepping down after a trophy-laden decade in charge, new Manchester City manager Enzo Maresca has big shoes to fill at Etihad Stadium, but Hart reckons most of the pressure on the Italian will come “externally”.
Having – briefly – broken the transfer record for an English player to acquire midfielder Elliot Anderson from Nottingham Forest for £116m, Maresca looks likely to lose Spain’s World Cup Golden Ball winner Rodri to Barcelona, although Morocco’s Ayyoub Bouaddi, 18, is in talks to join from Lille for £85.6m.
And the club still want to bring in Chelsea’s Argentina midfielder Enzo Fernandez.
All this against the backdrop of a disappointing 3-0 Community Shield defeat to Arsenal in Cardiff on Sunday.
Hart, who won two league titles with City, said: “I think the club isn’t heaping massive expectation on this season. I think they still believe that they’ve got the team and they’ve got the quality to challenge.
“I still feel they’ll want to be pushing on all fronts. But the same sort of pressure, as an organisation, I don’t think will be on this season… I don’t think they’re going to be put under that pressure internally.
“Externally, there’s always going to be the noise. Maresca will come immediately under fire in terms of how people want to jump all over Man City if they do struggle.
“Internally, I think they’re intelligent enough as a business to understand that what’s going on right now is going to be difficult.”
