A four-match international break has presented a stress test. “The intensity of the squad, the athleticism of it, really, I think it’s designed for the elite,” said the Wales head coach, Craig Bellamy, on the completion of four matches in 11 days. Elite club coaches would disagree. The Nations League and the wider set of international games staged across the globe have been accompanied by a daily list of casualties, club officials viewing matches through their fingers as players pull up and gesture to the bench.
Almost certainly to the disquiet of Enzo Maresca, City’s Elliot Anderson and Marc Guéhi were, alongside Harry Kane, the only England players to start all four Nations League matches, with Nico O’Reilly withdrawing halfway through. Liverpool’s problems appear to run deeper, with Alexander Isak and Cody Gakpo, early successes for the Andoni Iraola regime, sustaining injuries with Sweden and the Netherlands respectively. Jérémy Jacquet, another bright spark this season, reportedly strained a hamstring with France.
It was quiet around Anfield three hours before kick-off but there is a sense of what is to come. For £15 you can buy a ‘Guilty’ flag, depicting the City squad in jail or a ‘Cheats’ banner riffing off Oasis’s own style. What larks.
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The internet: an apology. It turns out you were right. It was actually a simulation all along. Now, talk to me about chemtrails again. And yes, maybe Vinícius Júnior has been replaced by a handsome, baffled-looking waxwork.
Welcome to the weirdest weekend of them all. We are now post-judgment, post-statement, postlapsarian. As the Premier League prepares to snap back into what must be described, out of habit, as reality, armed with the knowledge its serial champions have been the authors of a 10-year sham supremacy, the first question is fairly simple. How is it going to feel?
There is no precedent for this. Even the state of total confusion feels brittle given City maintain their complete state of innocence and deny all charges. We await the release of Irrefutable Body of Evidence, the great lost Madonna erotic thriller sequel, presumably recast around a steamy three-year regulatory tribunal scenario.
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Preamble
Of all the gin joints in the all the towns in all the world …
Manchester City’s first game after being found guilty of more than a hundred Premier League charges could have been anywhere: the Etihad, the Gtech Stadium, Portman Road, even Priestfield in the Carabao Cup. Instead, the great scriptwriter in the sky has decided it should be at Anfield – home of Liverpool, their biggest modern rivals and the team most affected by City’s success in the last 15 years. The atmosphere is always febrile when City visit Anfield; today, it will be off the charts.
Under normal circumstances, this would be a good time for City to play Liverpool. They have won five out of five in the Premier League, whereas Liverpool are still learning to speak Andoni Iraola’s coaching language and will be without both Alexander Isak and Cody Gakpo.
You don’t need a PhD in rocket science to know these are not normal circumstances. To many people, this isn’t so much a football match as a public shaming. City will try to focus exclusively on the football – partly because they believe they have irrefutable proof of their innocence, partly because anyone who wants to finish above Arsenal this season needs every point they can get.
Nobody, not even Biff Tannen, knows what’s going to happen over the next few hours. The only certainty is that there will be banners, banter and bile. In almost 140 years of English league football, there has never been a game like this.
Kick off 4.30pm BST.
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