Liverpool’s clash with Man City is a ghost game that may as well be played in a circus tent: Grudge match starts slow period of torture for the top flight after guilty verdict – and Anfield’s anger is real, writes OLIVER HOLT

DAILYMAIL.COM • 1h ago

By OLIVER HOLT, CHIEF SPORTS WRITER 22:49 10 Oct 2026, updated 22:49 10 Oct 2026

Is this an apparition that we see before us? Is it real? Is Liverpool-Manchester City at Anfield a football match or a ghost-game? Will it remain in the sport’s history books or will it be erased when City’s guilty verdicts on 114 charges of financial chicanery meet their punishment sometime in the months ahead?

The great managers who helped to define this collision between modern giants – Jurgen Klopp and Pep Guardiola – are both gone and now this clash stands for something else: it marks the start of a period of slow torture for the top flight in this country, a period when we cannot know whether there is any permanence attached to results that involve City. A period when we will not know whether we should believe what we see.

If – as many expect them to be – City are expelled from the Premier League before the end of this season, what happens to this afternoon’s result then? It will be declared null and void, presumably. The same fate, perhaps, will befall all matches involving City this season. ‘We’re not really here,’ City fans love to sing and its lyrics have never felt more apt.

‘We are not, we’re not really here,’ the chant goes. ‘We are not, we’re not really here, just like the fans of the Invisible Man, we’re not really here.’ And that’s the thing: none of us know whether City are really here or not now. We have been told that everything they achieved under their ownership by Abu Dhabi was just an illusion and yet the illusion lingers still.

City are top of the league. Or are they? Are they just waiting for a fall? Or will they conjure an escape? Perhaps, against all expectations, their appeal will succeed. Andy Burnham, the Prime Minister, has already expressed his admiration for City’s owners before attempting to recant.

God only knows what machinations are whirring in the corridors of power as the appeal plays out and football wrestles with its new place as a puppet of geopolitics. And while City play on, while they await their punishment, the damage that the whole affair does to English football multiplies.

The credibility of the Premier League is at stake. If City win at Anfield and stay clear at the top of the table, does it matter? If they’re going to get docked 100 points or kicked out of the league, then today’s result and today’s points will vanish into thin air. What’s the value in even playing?

Some will say that the value is in vengeance. That is what much of the rest of the Premier League wants to gain over City. After so much arrogance and so much intransigence and so much dissembling and depriving fans of other teams of memories that would have lived with them forever, it is hard to blame them for wanting to see City humbled on the pitch.

But there must be limits to that lust for retribution. So much resentment and so much anger about glories stolen away and trophies unfairly won, will follow City into Merseyside on Sunday afternoon that it is only right to acknowledge that an occasion that will be one of the most extraordinary in the history of our game will bring with it extraordinary demands.

There is only one meaningful target to be achieved at Anfield and in the terraced streets that surround it, and it is not the kind of goal that can be scored in front of the Kop or the Anfield Road End.

For all the animosity towards their club, the only thing that really matters on Sunday afternoon is keeping City’s players, staff and fans safe in a febrile atmosphere where emotions will be running wild.

The City team coach has been forced to run the gauntlet at Anfield several times before, most notably when the two teams met in a Champions League quarter-final first leg there in 2018. On that occasion, the bus was damaged enough by a range of missiles which rained down on it on its crawl along the Anfield Road for it to be rendered unable to carry the team back to Manchester.

It is not a problem germane to Anfield. Ten years ago, the Manchester United team coach was attacked on Green Street on its way to Upton Park to face West Ham in the final game played at the old stadium.

Hostilities are often inflamed in English football but it would be foolish to deny that this match is loaded with so much visceral disdain for the visiting team that there will be concerns about ensuring City have effective and comprehensive security. Many in the blue half of Manchester have felt unease for some years about travelling west to this fixture.

Some fan accounts on social media have called for Anfield to be the ‘most toxic we have ever seen it’. Some have encouraged the throwing of bottles of cider at the City coach. ‘Bus greeting vs Cheats,’ one Liverpool fan X account call to arms urged last week, mentioning a place to congregate two hours before kick-off. ‘Bring flags, banners, pyros, flares, koppabergs. Let’s make it a sea of red. Show them. Scare them.’

In the days since the findings of an independent commission established City’s guilt and the Premier League released a strongly-worded statement accusing City of constructing ‘sham’ arrangements to inflate sponsorship revenues artificially, the club has become a pariah.

Many believe the most suitable punishment for the club which won the Premier League four times in a row under Guardiola and has dominated the English game for much of the last decade is for them to be expelled from the top flight and demoted to League Two.

In Liverpool, the resentment against City centres on what was taken from the Anfield club unfairly. Steven Gerrard, one of the club’s favourite sons, never won a Premier League winners’ medal but he would have done in 2013-14 had City not been able to stack their side with players they bought because they cooked the books. Klopp would have built a dynasty in Liverpool had he not been denied by City sides.

All that is hard to oppose. A hostile reception is inevitable. And of course, City’s players and fans will be mercilessly baited during the match. That is to be expected but let us hope it begins and ends there. Punishment for City’s infractions must not be something to be meted out in violence. It should be handed down in the months ahead in fines, deductions and relegations.

Part of what fuels the resentment is the impression City give of being willing to use their fabulous wealth and endless legal resources to tear apart the fabric of the English game in their fury at being held to account. They have launched their appeal against the guilty verdicts and no one knows quite how long that appeal will take.

Until it is resolved, English football will be in limbo. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it will be in purgatory. This afternoon’s ghost game at Anfield is just the beginning of a period of our football lives when we will look at the agonised contortions of Manchester City and the desperate dysfunctionality of the Premier League and wonder what the hell we have become.

Liverpool’s clash with Man City is a ghost game after guilty verdictComments are subject to our House rules and TermsNewest{{#isModerationStatus}}{{moderationStatus}}

No one seems to have shared their thoughts on this topic yetLeave a comment so your voice will be heard first.

{{upVotes}}{{downVotes}}{{#replies.comments}}{{^isLast}}{{initials}}{{userAlias}}, United Kingdom, {{formattedDateAndTime}}{{message}}

{{upVotes}}{{downVotes}}{{/isLast}}{{#isLast}}{{initials}}{{userAlias}}, United Kingdom, {{formattedDateAndTime}}{{message}}

{{upVotes}}{{downVotes}}{{/isLast}}{{/replies.comments}}{{/replies.totalCount}}{{^replies.totalCount}}{{initials}}{{userAlias}}, United Kingdom, {{formattedDateAndTime}}{{message}}

{{upVotes}}{{downVotes}}{{/replies.totalCount}}{{/isComment}}The opinions and views expressed in the comments section are solely those of the individual users and do not represent or reflect the opinions, views, or positions of MailOnline. MailOnline does not endorse, support, or verify the accuracy of any user-generated content.Terms|Privacy|FeedbackOldest{{#isModerationStatus}}{{moderationStatus}}