Manchester City head coach Enzo Maresca has been told to prepare his players for a hostile reception when the Premier League champions-turned-defendants travel to Anfield, with Gary Neville predicting Liverpool’s ground will deliver “a reception like you have never seen” for the visitors.
It will be City’s first fixture since an independent commission found the club guilty of all but one of 115 charges relating to serious breaches of the Premier League’s financial rules between the 2009-10 and 2017-18 seasons. The verdict claimed City had arranged sham contracts with commercial partners and made undisclosed payments.
City have lodged a “comprehensive appeal”, branding the commission’s opinion “unsafe”, but the ruling stands for now and will hang over every away trip City make this season. This will start at a ground with its own long history of friction with the Etihad club.
Neville: ‘It will be a brutal day’ for Manchester City
Speaking on his Overlap podcast this week, the former Manchester United defender said there was little mystery about what Maresca’s squad would walk into at Anfield.
“I think if they want an understanding of how angry the game [as a whole] is going to be, then Anfield will tell them a week on Sunday, like you would never believe. I suspect there may be banners; there’ll certainly be chanting, there’ll be a reception like you have never seen for them at Anfield,” Neville said.
He went on to warn that the City manager himself would not be spared the fallout. “The players to be fair that are there will take the brunt of it, so will Maresca, the reality of it is on that day, but it will be a brutal day,” Neville added.
It is a view echoed elsewhere in the Sky Sports punditry ranks. Jamie Carragher has suggested City face a torrid run of away fixtures for the remainder of the campaign regardless of Sunday’s result. He argued that hostility from rival supporters is now effectively guaranteed at every ground City visit until the appeal is resolved.
A City side still finding its feet under a new manager
The timing adds to the pressure already facing Maresca, who succeeded Pep Guardiola at the Etihad in the summer after a decade in which the Spaniard delivered six Premier League titles, a Champions League and five League Cups.
The Italian, who previously worked under Guardiola as a City academy and assistant coach before spells at Leicester and Chelsea, is still bedding in a heavily rebuilt squad.
Meanwhile, Anfield is no stranger ground to City sides under pressure. Their team coach was famously attacked by Liverpool supporters with bottles and fireworks before a Champions League quarter-final in April 2018. Many home fans still feel aggrieved by title races in 2019 and 2022, when Liverpool missed out by a single point on both occasions.
With the financial-rules verdict still fresh, there is little expectation that Sunday’s atmosphere will be anything other than ferocious.
City’s position is complicated further by the fact the case is not yet closed. The club submitted its formal appeal to the Premier League’s Judicial Panel on 1 October, and the hearing is expected to be heard privately, with no firm timetable yet for when a final outcome might be published.
Until then, City will have to manage the consequences, both inside the dressing room and in grounds up and down the country, without the certainty of a resolved case to point to.
