Manchester City beat Liverpool 3-0 at Anfield on Sunday, October 11, 2026, with Rayan Cherki’s 78th-minute goal completing a three-goal second-half surge amid taunts from home supporters over City’s financial case. Erling Haaland opened the scoring in the 65th minute, and Jérémy Doku added another three minutes later.
A decisive spell after the break
The official match record lists Haaland, Doku and Cherki as City’s scorers. The sequence turned the match into a clear away win, with Cherki’s late strike providing its final goal.
The Guardian reported that chants began before kick-off and recurred during the game. It also described banners and taunts accusing City of cheating and predicting the club would be relegated. That account reflects the report’s description of the atmosphere; the material provided does not establish how widely the chants were shared among Liverpool supporters.
The timing gave the taunts a direct connection to a recent ruling in the Premier League’s case against City. On September 29, an independent commission found the club guilty of all charges related to serious breaches of financial rules over a nine-season period, as well as most charges concerning a failure to cooperate. The ruling was not a criminal conviction.
What the commission found, and what remains unresolved
According to the Associated Press timeline, the commission described sham contracts that artificially inflated revenue and reduced costs by more than £900 million. The commission’s findings, as reported by the league and AP, concern alleged rule breaches over a period identified in the case.
City has appealed. AP reported that the club lodged a comprehensive appeal before the October 2 deadline, maintains its innocence and argues that the decision contains material errors. The appeal means the commission’s findings should not be treated as an uncontested final outcome.
No punishment had been decided in the reporting supplied for this article. The Premier League has listed possible sanctions including a reprimand, a fine, a points deduction or expulsion, but those options are not decisions in themselves. The taunts at Anfield predicting relegation were supporters’ claims, not an announcement of a penalty.
A long-running case
The league referred the case to a commission on February 6, 2023, after allegations concerning the period from 2009 to 2018 and a separate allegation that City failed to cooperate. The commission hearing lasted 12 weeks in 2024, according to AP’s timeline.
That history helps explain why a match between the clubs became a setting for protest after the commission’s decision. But the crowd’s chants do not resolve the appeal or establish what sanction, if any, will follow. For City, the 3-0 result was settled on the pitch; the consequences of the financial case remained undecided in the cited reporting.