Manchester City's Anfield win fails to end crisis, Jonathan Wilson argues

Erling Haaland spoke after Manchester City's 3-0 win at Liverpool on Sunday, and Jonathan Wilson writes that the victory on the field will not be sufficient for the club to move on from the off-field crisis triggered by the independent panel's verdict.

Wilson frames the issue through the language used around football, arguing that the sport's argot is highly nuanced and that small deviations from its norms prompt questions about what is actually happening inside a club. He notes that when football idioms are applied outside match contexts they can sound jarring and may obscure the scale of non-football problems.

Wilson describes Haaland as a player willing to step outside footballing norms and presents his post-match remarks in full: “It was tough,” he said. “It was hard but we showed amazing character from back to front. So proud of everyone. [It’s] important to stay strong mentally, stick together and do what you can do something about, and the thing we can do something about is to play good football and fight together. That’s the only thing we can do.”

He adds Haaland’s follow-up comment: “You want to win games, it’s as simple as that,” he went on. “Perform well, play good football and win games. This was a mental battle, [it’s] never easy coming back from internationals.” Wilson argues that those remarks, stripped of context, could describe routine football setbacks, but that is not the primary difficulty facing City.

The column states that the match was overshadowed by the verdict of the independent panel looking into the charges brought against City, “the fact that the club have been found guilty of the greatest act of sustained cheating in the history of English football.” Wilson writes that the wider footballing community still appears unaware of the verdict's gravity and that the propaganda battle around the findings continues.

Wilson challenges the notion that regulatory fault lies with the rules rather than with City, saying: if City had objected to the regulations they had every opportunity to raise objections and vote against them. He reports that in the nine years under investigation, City’s net spending on transfers, before taking into account wages, was over £1.2bn ($1.6m), around 50% more than any other Premier League side, and that this spending produced “six league titles in seven years.” He also references City’s rhetoric about being “proud disruptors” and “rebels taking on the ‘red cartel’.”

The piece underscores that those consequences are not the responsibility of players such as Haaland, and observes that managers and players become the public faces while executives avoid scrutiny. Wilson quotes Enzo Maresca verbatim on managing the fallout: “My message to the players since we were together three days ago, when they all came back from their national teams, has been quite clear,” Enzo Maresca said. “Guys, the noise will always be there so it’s about how we learn to deal with the noise and it’s our duty to make our noise. Our noise is to win games in the way we did today and to be happy.”

Wilson notes the practical uncertainties arising from the panel’s finding: “nobody knows whether the three points City claimed at Anfield will still be theirs by Christmas. Nobody knows what division they will be playing in next season. Nobody knows how bad the sanction could be.” He emphasizes that these outcomes would be direct consequences of the actions of the club’s directors rather than mere misfortune.

City, as is their right, continue to maintain their innocence and have appealed.