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Manchester City manager Enzo Maresca will not officially meet his new players until next week while two of his rivals hold press conferences

Enzo Maresca will have to wait a few more days before getting to start on the training pitches with his Manchester City players. The nature of so many of his first team squad being at the World Cup meant that it would have been daft to drag anyone in earlier than necessary ahead of another lengthy campaign.

Other clubs are already up and running though, with Andoni Iraola and Xabi Alonso both kicking off their new eras at Liverpool and Chelsea respectively. Add in the fact that Michael Carrick and Roberto De Zerbi will be starting their first full seasons in charge at United and Tottenham, and there are plenty of unknowns among the biggest clubs.

Not that Iraola or Alonso are strangers to City, having managed against them last season and building their reputations in the game. They will be looking to offer fresh starts at their clubs to bounce them back into success, and City have to be wary of that.

At the same time, the only reason both are where they are is because the two clubs got themselves into a big mess. Chelsea spectacularly fell out with Maresca and then made a hash of his replacement Liam Rosenior, who only lasted a few months before being sacked.

Liverpool's title-winning team fell apart spectacularly, not least because it is not yet a year since they were widely seen to have delivered one of the best transfer windows in recent memory. Their big-money signings failed to meet expectations and that has seen not just Arne Slot leave but also chief executive of football Michael Edwards, while sporting director Richard Hughes is also expected to go in the next year.

At both Anfield and Stamford Bridge then, there is an unusual amount of chaos that Iraola and Alonso have walked into. The two are excellent coaches but City and then Arsenal have shown over the last 15 years that it takes more than that to make a club consistently successful.

That is a useful reminder for City as Maresca gets to work. Nobody is expecting the Italian to be able to replicate what Pep Guardiola did, but if expectations naturally lower he has plenty going in his favour and that includes the state of rival clubs.

There should be plenty of positives to come out of Merseyside and West London on Monday as the new managers say all the right things about what they want their time at the clubs to be about. Making that a reality is much harder though, and Maresca is coming in with the advantage of coming in on the back of success rather than disaster.

City will be later back this summer, but already have the headstart from how they have handed over to their new coach.