Erling Haaland walked off the Anfield pitch on Sunday evening with a verdict for the Manchester City camera operator who had chased him up the touchline all afternoon.
“You are everywhere, you,” the striker told the man.
“I see you more than my missus, I do.”
The exchange, captured on City’s own cameras and shared across their channels within hours, bounced around the internet overnight.
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It arrived at the end of a day City will not quickly forget. Haaland opened the scoring shortly after Liverpool’s Ryan Gravenberch was shown a second yellow card for a lunge on Jérémy Doku, with Doku himself and Rayan Cherki adding further goals as City swept past the 10 men in front of a hostile Kop. It was City’s first league win at Anfield in 23 years.
114 charges and a lodged appeal
The result was heavier for everything surrounding it. It was City’s first match since an independent commission found the club guilty of serious Premier League financial breaches, a ruling that covered 114 of the 115 charges brought in February 2023 over alleged rule-breaking between 2009-10 and 2017-18.
City have lodged an appeal and continue to deny wrongdoing. Sanctions, which could range from fines to points deductions to expulsion, will be decided at a separate hearing by the same commission.
Premier League chief Richard Masters called it “the most significant decision in Premier League history” and said the club had “systematically broken Premier League rules for nearly a decade”, per Al Jazeera’s write-up of the verdict.
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Maresca tells players to tune out the noise
That was the backdrop Enzo Maresca sent his players into for his first Anfield visit since replacing Guardiola in the summer.
“It was not easy for the players after the last two or three weeks, but they dealt with the situation very well,” Maresca said afterwards.
“I said during the week we need to learn how to deal with the outside noise but make our own noise, which is to win games.”
“It’s time to stay strong and stick together and do what you can do something about, stick together,” Haaland said.
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The win kept Manchester City top of the Premier League table.
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