Manchester City manager Enzo Maresca will face the media on Friday for the first time since the club were found guilty of breaking Premier League financial rules to the tune of almost £900m.

Ostensibly, the press conference will be to preview City’s game at Liverpool on Sunday.

But the questions on the 114 charges will no doubt dominate proceedings.

Here are seven questions Maresca is likely to be asked.

How much were you told about the charges before taking over at Manchester City?

Maresca may have only taken over as manager last summer, but he has been associated with the club since 2020 – two years after the period in which relate to the charges.

He was initially hired as Under-23 manager – and won the Premier League 2 title.

In June 2022, he returned as Pep Guardiola’s assistant.

He was still at the club when the charges were announced in February 2023.

Last summer, he oversaw a transfer spree in excess of £400m.

On Maresca’s arrival as City manager, chief executive Khaldoon Al Mubarak said: “He’s someone that has been part of this club, part of the success of the club, someone we all know very, very well. He knows us very, very well and he’s been part of this family.”

In what could be an eerie coincidence, Maresca also posted a quotation from Socrates on social media just before the verdict was announced: “The only thing I know is I know nothing.”

The club apparently knew of the guilty verdict before Enzo Fernandez arrived on a British-record transfer fee. Were you told?

City twice broke their own transfer record in the summer, first with Elliot Anderson then with Enzo Fernandez.

Anderson’s £116m move from Nottingham Forest was completed before the club knew of the verdict, but the deal for Fernandez, who cost the club £125m when he switched from Chelsea, was at the end of the summer window.

It would be remarkable that the possibility of fines, points deductions or even relegation or expulsion from the Premier League were looming over City but they then still sanctioned a joint-British record transfer fee for Fernandez.

Do you feel a sense of bitterness that you have inadvertently walked into the biggest disciplinary case in British football history?

There is a good chance that the higher echelons at City kept the discussions about the charges and subsequent verdict to themselves, out of a desire to keep the story as far away from the public domain as possible.

But as a prospective manager of the first team, you would feel a sense of aggrievement if a month after joining, the club had been found guilty of systematic rule-breaking by the Premier League and you hadn’t been told.

Will you stay, whatever the punishment?

Maresca has managed in the Championship before, at Leicester City.

Indeed, he won the title with them in 2024 (ironically during a period in which they broke league profitability and sustainability regulations).

He signed a three-year contract when he arrived at City, so is unlikely to walk out on it.

But if City are handed a punitive points deduction and Maresca is forced to contemplate life in the second tier once again, his agent is likely to be told to start making calls.

Have you spoken to Al Mubarak since the verdict was made public?

Given that the chief executive said Maresca was “part of the [City] family” and the manager said he was “happy to be back home” in his first press conference, you would think that the two men would have spoken over the international break. Even if only to check in on each other.

Did your message posted on social media an hour before the verdict was announced – an image of your bare feet on the grass with the words ‘Time to breathe. Time to analyse. Time to learn’ – have any significance to what was about to break?

Along with the Socrates quote, Maresca posted the above cryptic message, sending conspiracy theorists into overdrive.

On any other day it would have been dismissed as a pithy LinkedIn-style motivational cliche, but the timing bestowed a gravitas that Maresca maybe had not envisaged.

Unless it was planned.

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Have any players confided in you?

England head coach Thomas Tuchel said the City players in his squad had been making calls and discussing the verdict during the international break.

It would follow that the entire squad is nervous about the future and as such may have spoken to the manager.