Manchester City's team buses arrived via an alternative route for Sunday's hotly anticipated Premier League match against Liverpool, entering via Arkles Lane and leaving the hordes gathered on Anfield Road with nothing upon which to land their vitriol.
Last-minute shifts of famous Merseyside locations made you wonder whether this strangely unique Premier League match might have been better off taking place at Strawberry Field, where nothing is real.
The defining rivalry of the modern era in English football, when Pep Guardiola and Jurgen Klopp's brilliant teams duked it out heroically, was thrown into a different light by the brutal verdict in the Premier League's case against City during the international break. More than 100 charges of serious financial misconduct across nine seasons were proven and presented in the most damning light.
Enzo Maresca and Andoni Iraola now lead the teams in this different but the same rivalry, which is now more different than anyone would like.
"I'm not feeling all that different to previous games of football between Manchester City and Liverpool at Anfield over the last few years, in that it's a top-of-the-table clash, Manchester City have got tonnes of good players and I think they cheated," Neil Atkinson of the Anfield Wrap told the Sporting News before the game.
"I thought that was the case in 2019, 2018 and 2017. So for me, personally, it doesn't make much of a marked difference. And I think, in general, that was Anfield's view. For a lot of people, it's vindication what has come out in the independent commission verdict.
"What we should actually come to terms with, if we can, is the actual contests were real. Whether the trophies should be real is another conversation, but the actual games of football happened. The best game I ever saw with the 2-1 [City win in January 2019] at the Etihad. I could easily sit here now and say "cheating City b—" but I'd rather say "best game of football I ever saw".
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Let me take you down
"It's all a bit much. I was talking to someone who's not really doing very well with it all, and I equated it to grief," said home-and-away Manchester City fan Mike Hammond a couple of days before heading to Anfield with the other travelling supporters.
"No one's died, but there's lots of different forms of grief. But my point to him was more: someone shouldn't tell you how to grieve. Everyone grieves differently. It's all right for you to feel the way that you do because there is no right way. And if you feel really angry or really sad or whatever it is, that's just all right. Don't put any extra pressure on yourself, but it's easier said than done."
Since reports emerged of City's almost-total guilt in the Premier League case on September 25 and the official verdict dropped four days later, it has been a disorientating time in the extreme for the club's faithful. There are several aspects to this.
Firstly, the news coming towards the start of the longest international break there has ever been meant no opportunity for the mass catharsis of going to the match, along with the knowledge that any eventual release would arrive at Anfield, of all places. Then, as other fans bemoan hypothetical memories they might have been denied, City supporters were left questioning to what extent they could still fully trust or cherish the best days of their lives.
The catharsis of sporting emotions is never supposed to be that complicated. But they are because of the actions of City's executives, whose strident insistence that they will be cleared on appeal is so far at odds with the independent commission's conclusions. Into the vast space between the guilty verdict and City's "comprehensive body of irrefutable evidence" drops endless rhetoric and recriminations.
Other anecdotes include a City fan who found himself waking up at 4 a.m., stewing on his club's predicament and just grimly getting on with his day under cover of darkness. Another recounted his father, who started watching the team in 1952, calling for the whole entity to be "folded up," given the torrent of sham and shame.
None of this is to say that Manchester City Football Club do not deserve to suffer severe sanctions should their appeal, which must be heard before December 24, fail to turn things around. It's simply to illustrate that no fan base is a monoculture and that a community feeling unmoored needed to watch a football game on Sunday.
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Nothing to get hung about
"No, my friend, you cannot imagine how happy I am," Enzo Maresca said after City's resounding 3-0 win over 10-man Liverpool, when asked at the post-match press conference whether he could truly enjoy his team's performance with everything else that's going on.
The thing is, we can imagine how happy Maresca is. His tendency to grin warmly at most media questions remarkably remained intact when he was grilled over the commission verdict prior to the Anfield trip. The Italian is an interesting late addition to a scandal that had been swirling for many years before his summer arrival to succeed Guardiola.
Maresca knows the footballing side of City well, having served as an assistant coach during their 2022/23 treble success after working as manager of the under-21 team a couple of years earlier. The wider off-field mess is a new topic, but one he has navigated unfussily so far, knowing that a siege mentality can be a useful thing to harness.
“We need to learn how to deal with the outside noise because of the situation, and the noise will always be there,” he said after Erling Haaland, Jeremy Doku and Rayan Cherki got the second-half goals on Merseyside, Ryan Gravenberch's red card at 0-0 changing the entire complexion of the contest.
A BRILLIANT showing from Man City led to a 3-0 victory over Liverpool. https://t.co/4fKs29qxbm
— NBC Sports Soccer (@NBCSportsSoccer) October 11, 2026“But at the same time we need to learn to make our noise. That is: win games like we have done today, because at the end of the game our fans were singing, so the noise was from us and not the environment. Anfield away, 0-3 is a great result. In this moment, all the organisation needs this kind of win."
Wind back a couple of months and there were major doubts over how Maresca might fare, taking the reins from a managerial titan. Guardiola was not the only big departure at City over the summer, with Rodri, Bernardo Silva and John Stones — pillars of that decade of now-recast success – also leaving. It was hard to find anyone picking a City in transition ahead of Arsenal to win the Premier League; a notable number of observers had them finishing outside the top four.
The prospects of this team sticking together for the long term can only be considered remote in the prevailing circumstances, but they look good. Elliot Anderson was the best player on the pitch at Anfield, as he was when City won at Old Trafford last month, and is a formidable midfield presence. Matheus Nunes, Nico O'Reilly and Josko Gvardiol provide multi-faceted threats from full-back; Antoine Semenyo, Iliman Ndiaye and Doku are the sort of terrifying wingers who can beat you on either side. Cherki sent Jeremie Frimpong to the shadow realm before completing the scoring at Anfield, where no one felt the pressure less than the mercurial Frenchman. Then Haaland does Haaland things, his phenomenal World Cup showing signs of lifting him to another level.
Of course, this collection of players has been amassed by a club whose whole financial model has been entirely discredited, pending appeal. Not that they can do much about that when they have to snap into tackles and throw their bodies on the line. Before and after the Premier League's legal bombshell, Maresca's squad have shown considerable character. We know they are a comprehensive body of irrefutable footballers.
It's the things we don't know or claim not to know that have caused much consternation since their Anfield win.
Living is easy with eyes closed
"A popular goal in the away end, but not necessarily a popular goal in the rest of the country," Gary Neville said on co-commentary with Sky Sports after Haaland lashed Doku's deflected cross beyond Alisson.
There was lots more of this as City made merry during the final half hour. It felt like prepared moralising from Neville, Jamie Carragher and lead commentator Peter Drury. In a way, who can blame them for over-preparing for a match context unlike any other.
But there came a point where the confusion over what anything or everything meant felt a little performative
"Who knows where these three points will go," Drury mulled afterwards. Well, they didn't go to Liverpool. They went to Manchester City who, at this stage, are on course for a hefty points deduction. They are City's points until they're not. They will not float off into the cosmos. Nottingham Forest can't have them for a laugh.
We might know what City's punishment is within the next month. We will know the outcome of their appeal against the main verdict by the end of January at the latest; the Premier League handbook tells us that much. It's natural for fans to feel confused at the moment. Broadcasters and journalists can fill that gap instead of pontificating. The main reason for so many heightened emotions is the fact we're into the endgame after years of the City case meandering on.
Plenty of the reaction to Anfield has centred on the foreboding presence of an evil superteam that will keep destroying things forever. In reality, Manchester City's executives have been found guilty of very serious things and the clock is ticking down to the process ending either in their favour or, more likely now, staying in the Premier League. It does no one any favours to pretend we don't know this.
Some of the most serious potential punishments for City, pondered far and wide since the verdict – from relegation to crippling fines and legal action to expulsion from the Premier League – could be extinction-level events for a 132-year-old football club. Their impressive win at Anfield doesn't change that in the slightest. If you thought Cherki's impudent third goal put the stamp on a bleak day for the Premier League, City fans are already operating in greater darkness. They might not have a club next year. No one bemoaning the uncertainty at play here has that level of uncertainty.
https://t.co/zCKv1muFbn
— mikenumber5 (@MikeNumber5) October 11, 2026The travelling Mancunian contingent on Merseyside were loud, defiant, self-effacing and deeply sarcastic. At times of crisis, City supporters can turn towards their rich history of laughing through the chaos. That tradition long predates Sheikh Mansour. If the end of the Premier League case brings relegation but not liquidation, these people will be there. The lower leagues hold no fear for them. Don't threaten them and their inflatable bananas with a good time.
A Personal point of view is that any song lauding chairman Khaldoon Al-Mubarak jars badly at this point. For all the success of his tenure, Mansour's trusted lieutenant has overseen City wading into conflict with the soccer authorities and to the brink of disgrace. Surely a man who is also considered one of the world's foremost diplomats could have exercised some diplomacy.
But go back to that gap we outlined earlier, between the verdict and accompanying condemnation, and City's insistence on their innocence. It's not surprising to see football supporters collectively rally to their cause. The extent to which City's owners have dragged one of England's great clubs through the mud is lamentable. But fans are entitled to respond that Al Mubarak and his board have promised plenty and delivered all of it over the past 18 years. much to the chagrin of the established elite. That's why plenty of them still believe Khaldoon over the harrowing verdict.
Anyone aghast at this either does not understand football fans or is being disingenuous in the name of engagement. These are confusing times; don't pretend to be confused by supporters who have seen their fandom thrown into flux, enjoying the simple release of Haaland smashing the ball into the net against a bitter rival. Misunderstanding all you see is no way out of this mess.
