For us Manchester City fans, it was a little glimmer of light in what have been irredeemably dark days. Andy Burnham, with the applause of the Labour Conference still ringing in his ears, said he would be “really concerned” if Abu Dhabi’s ruling family, the owners of Manchester City who have been found guilty of wholesale breaches of football’s financial rules, sold the club.

It felt like a welcome change of tone. While the world has been united, so to speak, in condemnation of the alleged cooking of Manchester City’s books, the Prime Minister, not averse to taking political risks, chose to posit a proposition which was counter to the general opprobrium: that, irrespective of what happened or didn’t happen within the football club, Abu Dhabi has been good for Manchester.

There is the possibility that, at the end of this legal process, either the Emirati regime will be forced to divest itself of the club, or they might think that owning Manchester City has become more trouble than it’s worth, and Burnham is clear this would not be a good result. “I would be really concerned to lose them,” he said. “They’ve been such a huge partner in the building of modern Manchester, and the building of Manchester City into the global force that it is.”

He went on to thank the owners “for the money that they didn’t just put into the Etihad [Stadium] and the campus around it but also into........

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