Enzo Maresca faces two pivotal meetings within the next 48 hours as Manchester City navigate the fallout from their guilty verdict on Premier League charges. The manager will first address his players on Thursday, then meet the press on Friday ahead of the Liverpool game.
Team meeting set for Thursday
Nearly two weeks will have passed since the news first broke when Maresca finally gets to talk to his players together in the same room. A quirk of the timing means most of his squad have been on international duties, so Thursday will be the first chance for a collective discussion of the seismic events.
Conversations will already have gone on, and several players may have spoken directly to chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak. Yet the team meeting on Thursday will be the moment where Maresca has to look into the whites of his players' eyes and set their stance out for the coming weeks and months. They will be together for the majority of the next four weeks before the next international break, but none of those occasions will be as significant as this one.
Press conference before Liverpool
On Friday, Maresca meets the press as he conducts his press conference before the Liverpool game. This will be the first time any member of the City hierarchy has spoken in public since the guilty verdicts dropped, and another marker for what is to come given this is a topic that will not be leaving press conferences any time soon.
This will be significant for many fans looking to see and feel how they should react. Pep Guardiola came out swinging when he stepped up after the charges dropped in February 2023, and this was hugely important for supporters to rally behind the club in their defence.
Message crucial for City
With the Liverpool game not until Sunday afternoon, clips of Maresca's answers will be played out on Friday lunchtime and evening, all day Saturday and then Sunday morning and lunchtime, so getting the right message across will be key for City and their manager.
Somewhere in that time, Maresca also has to find time to get his plan to beat Liverpool across to his players so that they head to Anfield with everything they need to try to turn five straight wins into six. Those two big meetings before then - one private, one public - will go a long way to shape how City respond this season on and off the pitch.
