Manchester City head coach Enzo Maresca has gone early and gone hard. After the independent commission found the club guilty on the majority of the Premier League charges brought against them, he says City’s titles are “absolutely not” tainted. That is his line, and he is sticking to it.

There was no hedging, no careful retreat into legal jargon, no attempt to dodge the obvious. Maresca made it clear he trusts the hierarchy above him and believes City will overturn the ruling on appeal. “The reason I joined this club is that I completely trust, 100%, the owner, the CEO, the sporting director, all the organisation. So I don’t have doubt about that.”

That matters because this is not some passing off-field nuisance. The findings are severe. The commission found Manchester City guilty of all charges relating to breaches of Premier League financial regulations between the 2009-10 and 2017-18 seasons. The ruling includes allegations of sham contracts and misleading accounts linked to disguised secret funding worth more than £830m. City have appealed and stated that the verdict contains “clear material errors, of law, principle and fact and is unsafe”.

Maresca’s position is simple. He trusts the club, believes the appeal will succeed and sees his remit as football, not finance. “I spoke with the club for sure. We all trust, and probably the right moment to speak about that is when we are going to win this appeal.”

That is not nuanced. It is direct, which is probably the point. City need unity, a clean internal message and as little visible panic as possible. Maresca is giving them exactly that. He added: “For me, the players, we can control just the pitch side, the football side. So we are focused on that. This is what we can do and what we can control.”

Fair enough. Managers coach, players play, lawyers bill by the hour. Still, it would be naive to pretend the Manchester City charges story can be parked outside the dressing room. It follows the club everywhere now, and nowhere more loudly than Anfield.

City travel to Liverpool for their first match since the verdict was announced. Under normal circumstances, Anfield is already one of the hardest away grounds in English football. Under these circumstances, it will be nastier. Maresca knows it. “It will be a tough game, for sure. We need to be ready, the focus needs to be about the game, but we know the environment at Anfield.

“It probably will be worse because of the situation but, again, it will be our duty to do our best and try to win the game.