Football is a simple game. Twenty-two men chase a ball around for 90 minutes and at the end, the lawyers win. It wasn’t quite how Gary Lineker put it – then the Germans were the inevitable winners – but, amid the Americanisation of football, where everything can end up in court, Manchester City commissioned a new banner.
It was not celebrating Kevin De Bruyne or Erling Haaland, Phil Foden or Riyad Mahrez. “Pannick on the streets of London,” it read, borrowing a lyric from a Mancunian band, The Smiths, and celebrating Lord Pannick. The barrister may make a similar dent on the City wage bill as De Bruyne. He could assume a greater importance if the trophy cabinet is not to be stripped of some of the honours the Belgian and his predecessors won, if City are not to be expelled from the Premier League, if future seasons are not to begin with the impediments of points deductions or fines.
