Manchester City left Anfield with three points on October 11, 2026, but Liverpool supporters made sure the first match since the club was found guilty of breaching the Premier League’s financial rules was played against a backdrop of anger and ridicule.
It was billed as one of the most emotionally charged club football matches in recent years. Liverpool’s historically vocal and disapproving fans had promised a hostile reception for Manchester City as the Blues played their first match after being found guilty of breaching the Premier League’s financial rules.
In the end, Manchester City walked away with three points and smiles on their faces. They did not, however, avoid the scorn of the Reds’ supporters at Anfield, Liverpool’s famed stadium.
The Blues dodged the much anticipated “Anfield welcome” by avoiding the route usually taken by team buses driving into the venue. City’s bus was instead driven into the stadium through a different route and entrance, one normally reserved for service vehicles on match days.
Although Enzo Maresca’s team avoided the flares, pyrotechnics and attacks on the bus that met City during their visit to Anfield for a UEFA Champions League match eight years earlier, there was no escaping the chants and banners inside the stadium.
Liverpool fans showed their creativity on streets lined with thousands of Reds before kickoff, and again inside Anfield when they unfurled scathing banners in the stands.
The most direct attacks since the Premier League’s independent commission announced its guilty verdict focused on the finding that City “arranged ‘sham’ contracts” with a number of its commercial partners.
Manchester City were found guilty of 114 of the 115 charges. That gave Liverpool fans the chance to create a wide banner resembling a strip that carried the word “cheats,” but with the British pound sign replacing the letter “e” 115 times. The banner was held across the stand behind City’s goal.
Liam Gallagher, lead vocalist of the British rock band Oasis, is a self admitted lifelong Manchester City fan. Gallagher has been vocal in his support for City despite the charges and was among the travelling Blues supporters at Anfield. Liverpool fans seized on lyrics from some of Oasis’s biggest hits and used them creatively to mock City. One banner took a line from the hit song Stop Crying Your Heart Out.
Another banner carried a stanza from the song Where Did It All Go Wrong? A number of the titles City won during the charged period from 2009 to 2018 were with teams built around global football stars.
Liverpool’s supporters were among many in the Premier League who felt “cheated” during the years City piled up domestic football trophies. They made no secret of those feelings when given the chance at Anfield against Manchester City.
Liverpool fans also mocked the empire built by City’s former manager Pep Guardiola, who signed some of the biggest names during his run of a decade at the helm, a spell that brought 20 trophies.
Manchester City fans had their own way of mocking Liverpool. They waved inflatable bananas at the away end, a reference to a decades long tradition that began when a City fan took a blow up banana to a game in 1987. It also served as a dig at then Liverpool captain Steven Gerrard, who slipped during a match against Chelsea in the 2013/2014 season when the 0-2 loss to the London club set off a series of results that saw City clinch a come from behind Premier League title.
City departed with the points, but the banners, songs and inflatable bananas made the stands at Anfield a central part of the story. On a day charged by the financial case involving City, the rivalry between the two sets of supporters was on full display.