This Man City stuff is going to dominate the headlines for a while yet, isn’t it? Especially given that the City higher-ups are showing no contrition, no remorse, and instead are doubling down on their situation.

Their latest ‘lever’ to pull is to get Etihad Airways involved, who are briefing to the press that they are considering legal action because apparently they weren’t consulted by the Premier League, and the fact that they are associated with all of this has “created damaging implications” for them.

I mean, come on guys, this is ludicrous now. What did you expect? You are LITERALLY named in emails talking about inflated sponsorships. If City believes those emails are fake, you’d expect them to say so and produce evidence to demonstrate that. Instead, the club’s position has been that it possesses ‘irrefutable evidence’ supporting its case.,There will be City fans who will probably say something like, “yeah, but how do you know that those emails are real, this is all just a media witchunt”, to which my response is that if we’re going to go down that route, how do we know that they AREN’T real then? How do we know the sky isn’t actually green? How, how, how…?

The reality is that there is damming evidence that there are lawyers and people far more well-versed in this situation than you or I who have poured over this stuff, and as yet, City hasn’t come out and said all those emails and the evidence isn’t real. And believe me, if that was the case, despite all of this “respect the legal process” the City owners are banging on about, they absolutely would be coming out if those emails were fake, I can assure you.

The other sponsors haven’t come out with such rhetoric. But then again, the other sponsors don’t have such a direct line to the owners of Man City. So we should expect this. But we should also all expect and have known that this would be the next part of City’s approach. Start calling in favours. Etihad Airways? Get in line. Andy Burnham, the new PM? Say some words positively about us, will ya, pal? Man City are pulling every lever, breaking every glass in this emergency, calling in all favours like some sort of footballing Godfather looking to bury a story that is only being amped up as every day goes by and this international break rumbles on. Sportswashing is something everyone has been talking about for years, but now we’re seeing the visual manifestation of it in front of our very own eyes.

I should say that there are plenty of City fans who are reacting to this in the right way. They are disappointed, sad, bemused and angry that the club who they trusted has now been found guilty of serious financial-rule breaches; they are in a state of shock and to those people I really do feel for. The closest I felt to how they are feeling about The Arsenal was when the Super League was announced, and I got a text from my brother asking how I felt, to which my response was “I’m giving up my season ticket if this goes through”. That would have crushed me, but sometimes you just have to acknowledge when things aren’t right. Now, I’m not saying City fans give up their season tickets- far from it- but at least acknowledging the wrongdoing of the owners and standing with those who are equally angry at this is something they should fall in line on. Blindly saying “I believe this person” is the sort of thing you see when people pay too much attention to state-owned TV driving indoctrination for their cause, and members of the public just blindly accept what they are saying. Those City fans, I’m sorry, I have no sympathy, because you are not looking with your own eyes. What the commission has found is serious, and City now has to deal with those findings through the appeal process. I suspect most City fans just want the whole thing resolved so they can get back to supporting their football club. Instead, their owners and executives are continuing to fight their corner, which means this story is going to keep hanging over the club for some time yet. City needs to take its medicine, then rebuild, with new owners or the existing ones (if they are allowed to stay on). This doubling down, this approach of continuing to die on the hill for what is being proven to be a wrongdoing, is just mad. They keep banging on about ‘irrefutable evidence,’ but they haven’t shown any so far to the commission, so what are we saying here? They just found some down the back of one of the sofas in the ground? Do me a favour.

I think some of the City fans kind of want this to all just end now. So the fact it is all going to drag on and on for months now, I think, will have some of them dreading it. In fact, I know this is the case, because I was watching Sky Sports this week with a guy who runs a City podcast and he said as much. You have to feel for people like this guy, they don’t need any more of this, and are all probably getting exhausted by the feeling of it being an everlasting chapter in their club’s history. Time to turn the page, and yet their owners aren’t letting them, which is a real shame.

I think I’ll leave it there for today. Catch you all tomorrow. Have a good one.