Pulis: Maresca Must Forge Siege Mentality at Manchester City
Former manager Tony Pulis says Enzo Maresca should use Manchester City's Premier League charges to build a siege mentality ahead of Sunday's trip to Liverpool.
Tony Pulis, the former Premier League manager turned BBC Sport columnist, believes Enzo Maresca must channel the fallout from Manchester City's financial rule breaches into a powerful sense of unity within his squad. Writing ahead of City's Sunday visit to Liverpool, Pulis argued that the manager's primary task this week is to convince his players that external hostility can be transformed into on-field defiance.
City were found guilty of breaking Premier League financial rules, a verdict the club continues to deny. Pulis said the psychological approach should be simple: accept that the club will be vilified and use that as fuel. He expects supporters at away grounds, starting at Anfield, to be hostile, and sees the match as an immediate test of the squad's togetherness.
The columnist, who relished the underdog role during his own managerial career, said Maresca must first reassure his players that the club will defend its position. Only then, Pulis added, should the focus shift entirely to winning matches, with no off-field distractions tolerated.
Pulis also questioned the broader fairness of Financial Fair Play regulations. He noted that top-level football is dominated by massive investment, with transfer windows seeing around a billion pounds exchanged and individual players costing over £100m. Smaller academies, he argued, are routinely plundered by bigger clubs who pay minimal compensation and later sell those players at huge profits.
While some clubs have been punished for FFP breaches, Pulis suggested others may have escaped detection, asking whether the current rules are fit for purpose. He highlighted Brighton's Tony Bloom and Brentford's Matthew Benham as examples of owners achieving success through smart decision-making rather than big-club spending, and called for a system that rewards such intelligence.
Pulis's comments reflect a growing debate about the direction of Premier League governance. As City prepare for Anfield, the spotlight will be on how Maresca's players respond to the charges and whether they can block out the noise.
