BRIAN READE: 'It's not often I put myself in Noel Gallagher’s shoes but I did this week'

· Mirror

Manchester City stand guilty of gaslighting their fans by assuring them they had done nothing wrong, says Brian Reade, and should be relegated with its owners kicked out of English football

IT’S not often I put myself in Noel Gallagher’s shoes but I did this week.

I tried to imagine how I’d feel if my beloved football team had, like his, been exposed after a long legal process by the organisation they belong to, as baseless cheats whose every success over their modern era is a “sham”.

An independent panel found Manchester City guilty of not just breaking the very Premier League rules they signed up to, but doing so on an industrial scale over an extended period, while knowingly cheating their fellow competitors by injecting £830.69 million of hidden investment.

They stand guilty of deliberately obstructing the inquiry and gaslighting their fans by assuring them they had done nothing wrong.

Gallagher said City’s recent ­achievements might appear tainted to the rest of football but “I know what I saw. And I know how I felt”. In other words, even if the trophies were won by bent means and even if they take them away from us, no one can take the memories away.

And he’s right up to a point. The joy you feel when your team wins a trophy is off the scale. The ecstasy that surged through my body when Liverpool came back from three goals down to win the 2005 Champions League in Istanbul could only be compared with seeing my kids born.

But if it was proven that some of the players had taken performance-enhancing drugs at half time the memory of that night’s triumph would be dead to me. I could never think of it again without feeling embarrassment, shame and anger.

What City have done is no different to what drug-taking Ben Johnson did to win sprint gold at the Olympics or what Lance Armstrong did to win seven Tours de France. They were on performance steroids, City were on financial ones. For nine years.

I understand Gallagher’s reaction because when your football club is under attack the natural instinct of a fan is to support it.

What I don’t get is Andy Burnham leaping to the owners’ defence by saying “they’ve been a huge part of building Manchester City into the global force that it is”. No, Prime Minister. They are a force based on lies and deception. They are a corrupt mirage. A global embarrassment.

Instead of thinking like he’s still Manchester mayor and grateful for the investment they put into the city’s Etihad Campus (mainly some would argue, so they could sportswash their own regime which, according to Human Rights Watch, carries out widespread acts of repression) Burnham should have said nothing.

After a triumphant week, his defence of the indefensible was woefully misjudged, and he was wise to row back on it. Because the overwhelming feeling is the Abu Dhabi regime has committed huge crimes against football in order to hijack global sport’s most popular league for their benefit.

City should be relegated from the Premier League, the owners kicked out of English football and a law passed that bans nation states buying precious assets built by proud working-class communities for their own venal gain.

As for Noel, I hope when the enormity of the shame brought on his great club sinks in, he’ll regurgitate Johnny Rotten’s words at his final Sex Pistols gig: “Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated.”

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