Enzo Maresca might believe there is an irrefutable body of evidence that his players are not thinking about the looming shadow of possible expulsion from the Premier League.

Yet in the court of public opinion a decision has already been reached, and for the rest of the campaign Man City will be judged, and weighed down by, the unwanted label as a club being negatively affected by the verdict.

City played relatively well on Saturday, easily out-shooting the league’s in-form team, Brighton, and narrowly losing 1-0 only because of a hatful of missed chances and a solitary defensive error. That won’t stop the journalists, pundits, and rival fans from seeing the result through a certain unflattering lens.

So far, Marc Guehi’s recent defensive lapses have been blamed, by some, on guilt gnawing at the conscience of a devout Christian. A wider problem at the back has been blamed on distraction, on the feeling that, once the high of that defiant Liverpool victory faded, Man City are beginning to see themselves not as under-siege but as victims of the club.

This is extremely unlikely. Man City have lost consecutive matches because they always lose at Villa Park and because they were slightly unlucky in a very difficult match against the team currently in third.

This is not a crisis, just slack defending from a team yet to fully immerse itself in Enzo Maresca’s ways.

The truth might not matter, however. These narratives may become self-fulfilling. The players may start to believe the myth if the entire industry tells them, repeatedly, that the walls are closing in.

And that becomes more likely still should Arsenal begin to disappear out in front, at which point, as City stare down the barrel of three consecutive seasons without a league title, something approaching existential crisis could begin to bubble to the surface.

Or so we hope.

Again, this is not a likely scenario, just a convenient one to dream up. Everyone is desperate for Man City to stay away from a title race this season for the good of the brand and, more immediately, to ensure we are watching something real in the months ahead. Eerie ghost football, and a title challenge ready to disappear at any moment, is too embarrassing and depressing to contemplate.

Enzo Maresca's Manchester City sit second in the Premier League

But we should, and indeed must confront the possibility of the worst case scenario: that Man City win the Premier League title before sanctions have been announced, only to be stripped of the crown with a points deduction, leaving the second-placed team to sheepishly, and only semi-legitimately (or so it will feel), organise a trophy parade.

There’s another scenario, of course, that people don’t want to think about; that people would rather bury into their subconscious by trying to force the narrative that Man City are already beginning to fall apart under the heavy burden of their guilt. Man City’s appeal could be successful.

Their appeal rests on what they see as a basic misunderstanding in the reading of their accounts. They argue that the additional money boosting those sponsorship deals did not come from Man City’s owners, the Abu Dhabi United Group, but directly from the Abu Dhabi government, who regularly provide top-ups for this sort of thing.

This argument could yet work, if not in the appeal then in the high court. Certainly it would be naïve in the extreme to assume that City don’t stand a chance.

Again, nobody wants to think about the high court and the Premier League-destroying time lines it might entail, but suffice to say the Man City players will have been walked through all of these scenarios and made to believe in their owners’ innocence.

With so much at stake, professionally and morally, it is easy to understand how – like so many City fans - the players’ natural desperation to believe in a not-guilty verdict means total buy-in on the argument they’ve been sold.

Manchester City fans celebrate victory over Liverpool

The reaction at Liverpool was real. And it isn’t going to fade.

We must consider Man City a serious threat, then, like it or not, or at the very least must judge their title credentials purely on the merits of the team. Here there is better news for those who want Man City to fade.

City have conceded ten goals in their first nine Premier League games, as many as Hull City, and the “silly goals” they are conceding – as Maresca put it – are in keeping with the previous two years, when defensive security increasingly eluded Pep Guardiola’s side.

The reason for that seemed fairly obvious. But Man City chose not to address that problem in the summer.

The most important tactical aspect of Maresca’s Chelsea was his use of the full-backs, who, deployed in a remarkably complex array of roles, were the beating heart of his team. Reece James, Malo Gusto, and Marc Cucurella are three very smart footballers and even they sometimes struggled to keep up with the scope of the plans.

England's Nico O'Reilly features at full-back for City

Man City don’t have any full-backs so clever. In fact, they don’t have full-backs at all.

Nico O’Reilly, Rico Lewis, Josko Gvardiol, Matheus Nunes, and Abdukodir Khusanov have rotated as City’s Premier League full-backs this season. Two of those are centre-backs, three are central midfielders.

It’s worth noting that Man City have not been successful since they stopped using actual full-backs in those positions; in their most recent title-winning campaign, 2023/24, Kyle Walker played 32 times in the league. Until this most basic error is corrected – until City remember that their four consecutive titles under Pep relied upon at least one of Walker or Joao Cancelo – then the errors at the back are likely to continue.

On the evidence of the first nine rounds, and in the aftermath of Arsenal’s clean sheet at Anfield, it is the fatal flaw that will prevent Man City from challenging for the title this season.

Things could settle under Maresca. He might yet find balance at the back.

But if you’re hoping the Man City saga will go away, or at least end with decorum, then banking on Arsenal’s defensive strength, and City’s lack of it, is the safest bet right now.

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