There is something almost breathtaking about the casual confidence with which Manchester City's new manager addressed the small matter of 115 alleged breaches of Premier League financial regulations. Asked directly whether the charges were a concern for him, Enzo Maresca offered a breezy: "No, no, to be honest."

Fair enough, you might think. He has a club to run, a pre-season to prepare, a squad to get his head around. But the reasoning he offered was, to put it generously, an interesting one.

"The only thing I can say is that three years ago, the treble season, I was here," Maresca said. "And there were the same words about this kind of problem. In three years, it's still the same, so nothing happened. I don't have anything to say because it's something that is there. But again, the only thing I can say is that the way the organisation is working is to show how serious they are, how good they are, bringing titles and more things."

So the argument, essentially, is that because nothing has happened yet, nothing is likely to happen. The wheels of justice turn slowly, and apparently for Maresca, slowly enough to be safely ignored. Whether that confidence is rooted in genuine legal conviction or something more strategic is hard to say. But it is worth remembering that the independent commission hearing this case began a year and a half ago, and we are still waiting. The alleged offences themselves stretch across a nine-year period from 2009 to 2018. These are not minor procedural questions. These are fundamental questions about the integrity of competition.

City were formally charged with the 115 alleged breaches back in 2023, with the case also including a charge of failing to cooperate with the Premier League's own investigation into their finances. The club has consistently and firmly denied any wrongdoing. That remains their position.

City chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak, speaking back in June, struck a rather different tone to his new manager. He is not brushing anything aside. He is waiting, with what sounds like considerable intent, for the moment he can finally speak freely.

"Let me be as consistent as I've always been," Khaldoon said. "Until we have a ruling, I can't say much. Once we have a ruling, believe me, we're going to have a wonderful sit down together and I'll say everything I've wanted to say for the last three years."

That is a statement loaded with meaning. Whether it will ultimately vindicate City or open up a very different conversation entirely, nobody outside the legal proceedings can say with certainty. But it does not read like a man at peace. It reads like a man with a lot stored up.

For Liverpool supporters, the more immediately relevant angle is the financial one. According to a report in The Times, Liverpool are among four clubs, alongside Arsenal, Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur, who served legal notices on City in 2024 reserving the right to claim compensation in the event of a guilty verdict. Each of the four clubs has reportedly calculated potential losses of significantly more than £100m, factoring in missed Champions League qualification, potential prize money, and interest accumulated over the relevant period.

That is a staggering sum. And it is not plucked from thin air. There is a precedent forming around exactly this kind of scenario. An independent Premier League commission recently concluded that Everton gained a sporting advantage through breaches of Profit and Sustainability Rules, ruling that it contributed to Burnley's relegation in May 2022. Everton were ordered to pay Burnley £35m, plus interest, as a result, though the Merseyside club have since appealed that decision.

If a relatively contained case like that resulted in a £35m compensation order, the scale of what Liverpool and the other three clubs are potentially pursuing against City puts this case in an entirely different league of its own. The alleged breaches at City span nearly a decade. The competitive distortion, if proved, would dwarf anything in Everton's situation.

None of this, it is worth stressing, amounts to a verdict. City deny everything. The process continues. And Maresca, it seems, is quite comfortable carrying on as if none of it particularly matters to his day job.

Perhaps he is right to be. Perhaps the verdict, whenever it finally arrives, will clear City entirely and we will all have to reflect on what years of uncertainty did to the reputation of the Premier League itself. That is a legitimate outcome to consider.

But if it does not go that way, the implications for English football, for competitive fairness over more than a decade, and for Liverpool's own history during that period, will demand serious reckoning. Khaldoon says he will have plenty to say. Liverpool, quietly, have already made their position very clear.

The verdict cannot come soon enough. And when it does, nothing in English football will quite be the same again.