If Manchester City had been handed a list of grounds to avoid in the week after being found guilty, Anfield would have sat at the top of it with a line drawn round it. They go there on Sunday afternoon anyway, top of the Premier League, appealing everything, and walking into a reception that has no real precedent in the English game.
Why it is this fixture, and why now
An independent commission found City guilty of all charges relating to breaches of Premier League financial rules between 2009-10 and 2017-18. The commission used the word "sham" eight times in describing the club's dealings, including the artificial inflation of revenue by more than £900m. City say the ruling contains "clear material errors, of law, principle and fact and is unsafe", and have appealed.
Liverpool supporters have spent a decade convinced that titles were taken from them. They finished second behind City in 2013-14, 2018-19 and 2021-22, the last two by a single point each time. City fans point to the football Pep Guardiola's teams actually played and ask what any of that has to do with an accounting dispute. Neither side has ever persuaded the other, and now there is a verdict sitting underneath the argument.
A season with an asterisk nobody can see yet
The punishment has not been decided. The appeal runs alongside it. Until both are resolved, every City win carries a qualification and every league table has something missing from it, which has led to the genuinely strange suggestion that the entire season could end up meaningless. Expulsion, relegation and record points deductions have all been mentioned out loud by people who are not usually given to hyperbole.
Alan Shearer put it bluntly on BBC Radio 5 Live Sport. "I just think it's such a bad look that we're still having to wait for the consequences," he said. "This is the biggest thing to happen to the Premier League since it started in 1992. Credibility matters." He added that City have spent heavily in the summer, have won every game, and could still be winning in four months, which is exactly why he wants it settled now rather than left to fester.
Andoni Iraola, taking charge of his first Liverpool meeting with City, was more measured. "The worst thing probably is the uncertainty," the Liverpool head coach said. "No-one knows what's going to happen. We have to focus on Liverpool and being the best club we can be."
Maresca, and the problem of saying anything at all
Enzo Maresca inherited Guardiola's squad and, with it, the fallout. He was asked about the verdict repeatedly in his pre-match briefing and did not flinch. "The reason I joined this club is that I completely trust, 100%, the owner, the CEO, the sporting director, all the organisation," he said. He described the Anfield environment as something City already know, and said it will probably be worse now. "The reason I decide to become manager is for this type of game."
Tony Pulis, writing in his BBC Sport column, suggested the only workable response from inside the building is a siege mentality. Merseyside Police have said an appropriate plan is in place, a phrase that carries more weight than usual given what happened in April 2018, when City's team bus was attacked with bottles and flares before a Champions League quarter-final. Nobody was ever identified despite 130 hours of footage being reviewed, and Liverpool were fined £17,500 by Uefa.
City will probably handle the football part. They usually do. It is everything surrounding the football that they have never had to handle in quite this form before.
Fixture context: Liverpool v Manchester City, Anfield, Sunday 11 October 2026, 16:30 BST. City lead the Premier League. The independent commission's guilty verdict covers alleged breaches between 2009-10 and 2017-18; sanction and appeal are both outstanding.
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