We Manchester City fans fear relegation and losing trophies … but club are bang to rights

Despite attempts to legally filibuster the charges out of existence for the past three years, we’ve rightfully failed It couldn’t have been more prophetic. In 2008, 15 years before Manchester City were charged with financial fraud, fans started singing “City’s going down with a billion in the bank” to the tune of Yellow Submarine.

This was because the former Thailand president Thaksin Shinawatra’s 15-month ownership of City had come to an abrupt end when more than £1bn of his assets were frozen . And although Sheikh Mansour of the UAE had stepped in to save City, we were sinking fast. Despite the UAE’s untold riches, by December we were in the relegation zone. It’s called Cityitis – shorthand for our tendency to self-destruct when things appear to be going well. In fact we won trophy after trophy. But we continued to sing the song about going down with a billion in the bank. When the…