When Everton and Nottingham Forest faced the threat of points deductions last season, you could smell the anxiety washing through the corridors of those clubs - stalked by the sudden spectre of relegation and unable to promise Premier League football to players they wanted to buy.
In the moment they announced an agreement to pay Erling Haaland a salary of £400,000 a week and rising, for a period of approaching a decade, Manchester City signalled that there is not the mildest anxiety hanging over them. Not the remotest sense that the verdict, expected within the next few months from an independent tribunal convened by the Premier League, will go against them.