The Premier League charges are unquestionably the most crucial decision Manchester City will make in the coming year.
Win, and you will feel enormous vindication, as well as the freedom to continue running the club as you see fit and compete for the largest rewards in the game. If we lose, the implications will be catastrophic, necessitating significant reform.
In the meantime, business as usual continues, with the most important question being whether Pep Guardiola will remain as manager.
The Catalan is supposed to leave when his contract expires at the end of next season, yet he has been persuaded to stay before and hope has not been lost that he could still turn a nine-year journey in Manchester into double figures.
Behind that, City really do need to make inroads with Erling Haaland this season. It was the intention of club bosses early on in last season to start talks with him over a new contract but there appears to have been nothing done as of yet; asked about a potential deal, Haaland said on Tuesday: “I’ve had two fantastic years, and have three years left. That’s really all I can say.”
Nobody can argue with that, and a fantastic third year is expected to follow the first two, but next summer will be the last year City can really get a blockbuster fee for the Norwegian.
A player of his quality will command a sizeable fee at any stage and the club would be delighted if he stayed for four years, but if you are talking a sum of money that would allow some serious squad-building to go on it can’t be any later than two seasons out from the expiry of his contract.
That still leaves plenty of time, and Guardiola’s future and the charges may well be worth a pause over, but the fact remains that City haven’t made the progress they they hoped they would over Haaland.
Just as the clock is ticking for them to sort the Guardiola situation out, the same is true of their second biggest asset.
If it feels like the upcoming months are critical to what happens next at the football club, the same is true of the team.
Guardiola will be near-impossible to replace so City need to know exactly where they are with everything else in order to minimise the disruption and the drop.
The more they can have in order, the more prepared they can be for any storms that arrive.
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