Maresca Sells Calm at City While the Rest of the League Is Asked to Judge

In my view, Enzo Maresca wants a football club to behave as though a damning verdict belongs to somebody else. Nine days after the Premier League published a report that found Manchester City guilty on most of the 115 charges, the head coach describes the mood in his squad as "fantastic", says the players are "excited", and insists their minds are on beating Liverpool at Anfield on Sunday. It is a clear message, and a convenient one, because City are top of the league and the football is the one part of this story they still control.

What the verdict says, and what City say back

The facts of the case are heavy. According to BBC Sport, the Premier League's report alleged that City relied on "sham" contracts to hide secret funding worth more than £830m. The club was found guilty on most of the 115 charges. City have appealed, and they continue to say publicly that they did nothing wrong.

The same defiance is reported to run through private channels. BBC Sport says messages passed to people connected with the playing staff are understood to be just as forceful. So Maresca's public calm is not an improvised line in a pre-match interview. It matches a position the club is holding on every front.

That matters for how to read his words. Maresca added that he felt "calm" and that his squad trusts the club "completely". A head coach who says that describes his own state and the dressing room's confidence, but he also sets the terms on which both will be discussed. City's argument, in effect, is that the dispute is a legal one, the appeal is pending, and the team has a game to win. As a way to protect a squad, that is sensible. It is also an argument that only holds while results hold.

A message delivered to a scattered squad

The timing complicates the picture. News of the verdict emerged while most of the squad were away on national-team duty, so the players absorbed it in different places and without Maresca beside them. The club's international contingent was back on the training pitch on Thursday. BBC Sport reported this week that Maresca planned to speak to them once they were back in domestic action, and it is understood he told them to keep the crisis from denting their attitude and focus as the league restarts this weekend.

That is a managerial problem of an unusual kind. Most dressing rooms take bad news together. City's took it apart, so the initial group conversation doubled as the chance to set the tone. Maresca's public comments suggest he chose a narrow brief: the football is what they can control, and the rest is for others.

"They know their profession and they know that the noise is there, but they don't care too much about the noise," he said. The phrasing is careful. He does not claim the noise is absent. He says the players know it exists and have decided how much attention to give it. Whether that is true of every member of a squad is something a coach cannot know, and nothing in the evidence tells us.

Haaland adds the fans to the argument

Erling Haaland, speaking to Sky Sports, went further than Maresca in one respect. Where the coach talked about focus, the striker talked about supporters. He said he cares "a lot" about City, that he spent his first four years at the club, and that he is "a fan myself". He urged everyone to stay together and positive, and finished with a call to "enjoy the ride and smile".

Player Focus - Erling Haaland

Erling Haaland

Forward · Age 26 · #9 · Norway

Manchester City

Competition	Apps	Mins	G	A	Y	R	SpG	PS%	AW	MotM	TSG
FIFA World Cup Norway	5	466	7	0	0	-	4	62.5%	3.4	3	8.19
Champions League	1	90	2	0	1	-	6	57.1%	2	1	7.63
Premier League	5	450	5	0	0	-	4	68.8%	1.8	-	7.94
FIFA Club World Cup	2(2)	257	3	1	0	-	3.8	77.5%	0.8	-	7.32
UEFA Nations League A Norway	4	337	3	0	0	-	4.5	58.9%	2.8	1	7.09
FA Cup	3(1)	-	3	0	0	-	-	-	-	-	-
Community Shield	1	-	0	0	0	-	-	-	-	-	-
Total / Avg	-	1600	23	1	1	-	-	-	-	5	7.72

TSG Rating - Our In-house, The Sport Guru player rating system. All scores are averages of the in-house scores given. All stats accurate at time of publishing.

His choice of audience is telling. Haaland tops the scoring list in the new Premier League campaign with five goals, according to BBC Sport, so his voice carries weight in the dressing room. By addressing supporters, he asks for loyalty as well as performance. Maresca draws the same link when he says the team hopes to win at Anfield "together with the fans".

Taken together, the two statements form a single plan. The squad insists it is untroubled, supporters are invited to share that stance, and a win on Sunday becomes the cleanest proof that it is working. That plan leans heavily on one fixture, and neither man mentions what happens if it goes badly.

The rest of the league cannot be so calm

City can choose to ignore the noise. Their rivals must field questions about it. With football back after a three-week break, BBC Sport notes that managers elsewhere should expect the verdict to come up at their mandatory pre-match press conferences.

Early responses show how awkward the subject is. Leeds head coach Daniel Farke and Newcastle's Matthias Jaissle both avoided saying much when they spoke on Thursday. It is understood a number of clubs have decided their managers should stay silent. Silence, in this case, looks like policy.

Oliver Glasner of Nottingham Forest was more forthcoming. He moved to Forest from Crystal Palace in the summer, and he drew on Palace's demotion from the Europa League to the Conference League in 2025 after a breach of multi-club ownership rules. His complaint was about delay. He said Palace did not know which competition they were in, deadlines kept slipping, and the final verdict arrived 10 days before the Conference League began. His hope for City's case is that it ends "as soon as possible".

Glasner also placed the stakes beyond one club. He said the Premier League still suffers damage, that the subject is big around the world, and that the integrity of the competition matters most, since fans who lose trust in it "won't watch it any more". That is a very different worry from Maresca's. City's concern is Sunday. Glasner's concern is whether the competition itself can be believed.

Titles, memory and an unsettled punishment

One question hangs over everything: what comes next. No sanction has been handed to City yet. BBC Sport has been told that neither the Premier League organisation nor its member clubs show much enthusiasm for stripping past titles. That describes a mood, not a decision, and should be read that way.

Coventry manager Frank Lampard, who played for City in the 2014-15 season, offered a view from the players' side. He made 38 appearances and scored eight goals after arriving from Chelsea, where he had spent 13 years. He said players would not feel they had lost their titles even if the club were stripped of them, because those wins are part of personal history. He keeps his three Premier League wins with Chelsea "in my head" rather than on a wall at home.

Lampard's point is human and fair, but it concerns players. It says little about supporters, rivals or the league's record books, which is where a stripped title would really bite. It also sits beside a blunter opinion in the BBC coverage: Swindon boss Ian Holloway is quoted in a video headline saying "I would throw them out". That is one manager's view, not a ruling, and nothing here suggests expulsion is under discussion beyond the question being asked.

Why Sunday matters more than it should

Football loves a clean test, and Sunday's 16:30 BST kick-off at Anfield is one. A City win would give Maresca's calm a result to stand on. A defeat would not prove the squad is distracted, since Liverpool are a difficult opponent in any circumstances, but it would invite that reading anyway.

That is the real risk in the "we don't care about the noise" approach. It persuades while the team sits top of the table, which Maresca himself cites as a reason for the players' excitement. It is much harder to defend if results turn, because then every poor half becomes evidence for a theory about the verdict. The coach has tied the squad's mood to the table, and the table does not stay still.

For now, the picture is of a club holding one line in public and in private, a head coach asking his players to treat the case as someone else's business, and a league whose other managers mostly prefer to say little. The appeal will take its own time. Sunday will not.

Research: This article uses the archived evidence supplied for this story. Story inspiration: BBC Sport's original report.