So City’s victory is unfair? When was football EVER fair?

INa sport where the moral high ground stretches to about 32-and-a-half feet above sea level, even fullthroated cries of protest against injustice and calumny cannot carry very far.

Which is why so many are ignoring the selectively dramatic weeping and wailing about… wait for it… ‘the death of Financial Fair Play’. May it rest in pieces.

To hear some tell it, the lifting of Manchester City’s Champions League ban represents a dangerous slide towards a new cheat’s charter.

They see this week’s verdict by the Court of Arbitration for Sport as a radical departure from honest competition, guaranteed to imperil all that is good and noble about the beautiful game.

Quite. As Oscar Wilde (almost) said about the demise of little Nell, it would take a heart of stone not to laugh.

Apparently, elite football was a hybrid socialist/capitalist utopia until City came along.

Peasants dined with kings and everyone got their fair crack at the top prizes. It was paradise on pay-per-view.

Truthfully? The City case, from first hearing to last knockings, was no great clash between good and evil.

Yet the tribalism of the game inspires only the most discriminating criticism and flexible principles.

Even a contortionist cannot face both ways at once. But the average football fan — not to mention those hired guns in the boardroom — manages it six times a day. Double on match days. Oh yes, that lot over there are acting out of self-interest. Us? We’re duty-bound to protect our shareholders.

The other guys are up to all sorts of shady shenanigans. We’re merely adept at making our voices heard in the corridors of power.

It goes on at all levels, with the Scottish game currently leading the field in twisted priorities and unblinking stand-offs. Exhausting, isn’t it?

At least there was some mild diversion from the main event this week, courtesy of Hibs inviting a pile-on by spending money on a striker. Never a good look when staff face redundancy and players are bucking against more pay cuts.

Dive down into the economics of Kevin Nisbet’s £250,000 signing, of course, and it’s not quite as heinous as it looks.

The forward himself has accepted reduced terms and, when Florian Kamberi is eventually sold on, the overall wage bill will have been cut.

Still, the optics are awful. And, with every club in the country asking players to take some sort of financial hit, plenty might be glad not to have the spotlight turned on them.

Rangers spent £3million on Ianis Hagi. Celtic will be taking on a decent slice of Mohamed Elyounoussi’s Premier League-level wages as part of his loan from Southampton — and may yet break the bank for a goalkeeper.

Ask fans of those three teams and they won’t hesitate in criticising the other two, while tying themselves in knots to justify their own club’s actions.

The truth is that none of them are guilty of any novel footballing crime against morality and decency. Professional clubs have every right to maintain themselves as a going concern.

Strengthening the squad, or avoiding being weakened to the point of collapse, is necessary even in an era of cutbacks.

Remember that teams compete for prizes, be they titles, access to the revenue-rich world of UEFA competition… or simply surviving in their allocated tier of the game.

Ah but, ah but. But nothing. Either you clear out protectionism and eradicate financial bullying at all levels.

Or you accept that the entire game is built on an unfairness embedded in its DNA.

This sport has been about money from almost the outset. While rugby remained amateur and cricket divided its participants into gentlemen and players, association football dived straight into professionalism around about 1880. And that meant success quickly came to those who paid the most.

Making it a force for good, dragging generations of working-class boys — and latterly girls — out of poverty.

There was no pretence, no sham hypocrisy. That came later, when people tried to convince us that they were acting ‘for the good of the game’. There are Newcastle United fans who see no problem with a murderous Saudi regime taking control of their club.

All over Europe, oligarchs and dictators do whatever they damned well please.

Consider the case of FC Rostov, riddled with Covid, being forced to send a squad of schoolboys to lose 10-1 to Sochi — whose owner just happens to be a childhood friend of Vladimir Putin — in a crucial Russian Premier League match just a few weeks ago.

So City snubbing their noses at regulations and angering powerful rivals?

Forgive us if we don’t choose this particular molehill to die on.