The best way to describe the football fan reaction to the Man City charges is the way people in the past used to love hangings/beheading. People turning up in droves to witness it because it served a function, letting society unify in one voice to push all their anger onto one individual. The powers that be at that time used to roll out a beheading/hanging to keep society placated and distracted, much like how the Romans used to placate the masses with Gladiator games. Surely we’ve evolved as a species beyond these instincts of mindless blood lust? But no, we suffer the same tendencies but the medium is now through 1080p phone displays.

I think the level of hysteria around the Man City case is becoming very weird. People genuinely acting like the Club has to be destroyed and sent to the shadow realm have lost the plot in my opinion. They weren’t found guilty of match fixing. They weren’t paying refs. This isn’t comparable to the Serie A scandal or Lance Armstrong. They saw an anti-competitive and unjust rule which only allowed the same 4 teams to dominate the League and said “no, we don’t want to wait decades to slowly build up revenues and have to sell our best players every time they do well to stop us from succeeding. We have the money, we’re not going to be irresponsible with Man City’s finances, we want to invest and compete now”. Again, the idea that every team other than 3/4 in the League has to go on a constant merry-go-round of “hey that player for you guys is really good, we’re going to just take him because you can’t invest any more of your own money and he would be wasted at a middling team like you” is wrong. It doesn’t help football in this country and the rules should change to allow these clubs to be bought by owners with even deeper pockets who can give those clubs and even higher chance of sustained success.