Manchester City left Anfield on Sunday with three points, a perfect league record intact and the same cloud they arrived under.
The win was emphatic.
After a goalless hour in which Liverpool had the better of the play, Ryan Gravenberch was sent off for a second yellow card in the 62nd minute.
Erling Haaland scored three minutes later, Jeremy Doku curled in a second, and Rayan Cherki finished a flowing move on 78 minutes.
City have now won six from six and sit three points clear at the top.
Yet every one of those points carries a question mark.
It was City’s first match since an independent commission found them guilty of serious breaches of Premier League financial rules, in the long running case widely known as the 115 charges.
Premier League chief executive Richard Masters said the club had systematically broken the league’s rules for nearly a decade.
No sanction has been set.
City have lodged an appeal, which will be heard by a new three person panel, with no timeframe yet agreed.
That uncertainty hung over Enzo Maresca’s press conference.
The City head coach was asked whether he wanted the case resolved quickly, given that a result like Sunday’s might count for little by the end of the season.
His answer was brief, but it went further than a simple refusal to comment.
“No, my friend, absolutely.”
“You cannot imagine how happy I am,” Maresca said.
“I don’t care about… I’m here to try to prepare the games and win games, so I don’t care about…”
“I said many times, hopefully, I can speak about this situation when we’re going to win the appeal.”
It is not the first time Maresca has said he will speak only once the process is over.
This time, though, the wording assumes the outcome.
He did not say if City win the appeal, but when.
That confidence will not travel well on Merseyside.
Liverpool finished second to City by a single point in both 2019 and 2022, and many supporters will view any sanction through the lens of those title races.
Virgil van Dijk, speaking on the same afternoon, took the opposite approach, saying he had enjoyed the rivalry on the pitch but would wait until the case was properly settled before sharing his views.
The appeal panel cannot hear new evidence.
It can only consider whether the original commission made a legal error, misread the rules or acted with gross unfairness.
Maresca’s certainty, in other words, rests on a narrow route.
For now, City keep winning, and Liverpool sit nine points behind them.
How much any of that means in May depends on a decision nobody can yet predict.
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