Sunday has all the makings of something genuinely unforgettable. The trouble is, nobody seems quite sure what comes next.

Manchester City arrive at Anfield as a wounded, cornered animal. Found guilty of 114 of the 115 financial charges brought against them by the Premier League, they walk into the most hostile ground in English football for their very first fixture since an independent commission delivered a 40-page core verdict on 29 September that shook the game to its foundations. The timing, from a pure theatre standpoint, is extraordinary. A Hollywood scriptwriter would have thought twice before pitching it.

And the rivalry makes it sharper still. Had City not engaged in what the commission has since decided were sham contracts and artificially inflated commercial revenue between 2009 and 2018, the entire competitive landscape of the last decade looks different. The 98-point season. The 93-point season. Both lost by a single point. The question of whether Pep Guardiola would even have arrived in Manchester without the financial muscle those arrangements provided is one that hangs awkwardly in the air and will continue to do so long after the final whistle on Sunday.

Sky Sports will be licking their lips. Gary Neville will deliver his verdict, Jamie Carragher will pick apart the tactical chess match, and viewing figures could surpass anything this or any other Premier League season has produced. One commentator this week called it the biggest match in Premier League history, and inside its own bubble it is difficult to argue. The home crowd will be furious, vocal, and utterly relentless. The away end will respond with the defiance of a group that has been told, in the starkest terms, that the club they follow cheated. The atmosphere alone will be enough to sustain the occasion.

That much feels certain. What follows is considerably less so.

This league has form for carrying on regardless. A full season played in empty stadiums did not break the connection between clubs and their supporters. The European Super League collapsed within 48 hours because supporters refused to let it stand. The Premier League's resilience, at its best, comes from the people inside the grounds and in front of the televisions who simply refuse to walk away.

But the scenario now unfolding is something different. If Enzo Maresca keeps City competitive, if that talented squad sustains a genuine title challenge while the appeals process grinds on, the Premier League is asking everyone else to simply park their reservations and keep watching. For those who spent years expecting a guilty verdict, watching City continue to accumulate points as if nothing happened could feel like one provocation too many.

The Premier League has bottled and sold its particular brand of drama to a global audience for the better part of 30 years. This time, the drama has turned on the competition itself, and there is no clean resolution in sight. The appeal process stretches ahead without a clear endpoint, and the question of whether this season can be taken seriously while the verdict is contested is not one the Premier League has a convincing answer to.

Sunday will be appointment viewing. Anfield in full, righteous voice against the club at the centre of the biggest scandal in British sporting history is as compelling a Premier League fixture as the fixture list has ever served up. But compelling and comfortable are two very different things, and once the noise fades and the weekend is done, English football faces the quieter, harder work of figuring out what any of this actually means.