Football Daily | Manchester City lace up their gloves ready for another round. Bring your dinner - 纬来·体育

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Seven days after leaking out, the Manchester City saga has become a flood. Peace in our time has disappeared into the distance as football jurisprudence’s longest-running case enters Defcon 1 lawfare. Football Daily is duty bound by its learned friends in the legal department who gamely pick through this cheery teatime email before it reaches you, to say that City continue to deny all charges [we don’t necessarily need this but we’re happy to remain the butt of the joke – Football Daily Lawyers]. Though that also serves as a statement of the bleeding obvious. Club operatives and associates have employed not so much a double but a nonuple-down. The expected appeal has now been lodged by City. The statement was as you’d expect: “The club is innocent of the accusations made by the Premier League and a comprehensive body of irrefutable evidence exists in support of all of its positions, relating to this case.”

In the absence of a more august body tackling the issue, may I be so bold as to suggest both an expansion, and a revision of the much missed Gareth Bale Scale, given the state of our long-ago once ‘beautiful game’ (and an overlong international break). Thus: Infantino, Manchester City, Southampton, VAR, Argentina. In this topsy-turvy world, top, is of course bottom, or thereabouts” – Michael Lloyd.

I am struggling to think of any other jurisprudence where the true victims of the crime (the fans) are also the victims of the punishment. As Spanish Football Daily would say, siempre pagan justos por pecadores” – Mark Brookes.

Having nothing better to do this evening, I knocked up a little Python program to replay the results of several ‘tainted’ seasons, to see what effect might be had from removing Manchester City’s results. I got a hit for 2010-11 where Blackpool, who finished second from bottom and were relegated, would have actually come fourth from bottom had there been no City games. Look, I know it doesn’t really make any sense, my doing this, but still intriguing” – John Guthrie.

Re: yesterday’s Football Daily. As one of Cristiano Ronaldo’s greatest advocates, I’m really delighted to see Portugal struggling without the mighty one. What? Eh? Oh?” – Martyn Shapter.

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