Long before Enzo Maresca took his seat in the Etihad dugout this summer, his predecessor Pep Guardiola made a promise that continues to hang over Manchester City’s unresolved financial saga.
As the club’s independent commission hearing into 115 alleged breaches of Premier League financial rules grinds on despite the recent report that he club are guilty of almost all the charges, comments Guardiola made during his decade in charge are being revisited.
Guardiola, who left City at the end of last season after winning 20 trophies in ten years, was repeatedly pressed on what would happen to the club if the Premier League’s disciplinary panel ruled against them and handed down a relegation.
According to a report by the Mirror, the Spaniard made clear they would become more stronger, whatever division City found themselves playing in.
Speaking about the prospect, Guardiola painted a picture of a club climbing back through the leagues rather than accepting a permanent fall from grace. He explained that regardless of where a punishment placed the club, the plan was simple: fight back up.
“I don’t know the position of the conference they’re going to bring us, we’re going to come up and come up, we’re going to come back to the Premier League. I knew it then, I feel it now,” he told Sky Sports.
It was a message aimed as much at anxious supporters as at City’s many critics elsewhere in the league, who have watched the case unfold with a mixture of scepticism and, in some quarters, barely disguised anticipation of a guilty verdict.
A verdict still awaited under new management
The charges themselves relate to accusations that City failed to provide accurate financial information across nine seasons between 2009 and 2018, along with separate allegations of failing to cooperate fully with the Premier League’s investigation. City have always denied any wrongdoing and have continued to do so under the club’s new leadership.
Maresca, who returns to the Etihad for a third spell after stints coaching City’s academy and later managing Leicester and Chelsea, now finds himself waiting on a verdict he had no part in creating, but one that could still shape the club he now leads.
Unlike Guardiola, Maresca has so far said little publicly about the case, focusing instead on his own tactical blueprint for a squad assembled largely under his predecessor.
But questions about the charges are unlikely to disappear from his press conferences any time soon, given how frequently journalists raised them with Guardiola right up until his departure.
