The Pac-Man defence, as all high-flying financiers know, is a tactic borrowed from the enjoyably addictive computer game which means that if you feel you are under attack then you fight back even harder to scare the crap out of your enemies. It seems that in Abu Dhabi and at the Etihad the poor beleaguered executives of Manchester City have been at their Nintendo machines.

What place a Wolves or an Ipswich or a Burnley in this oil-rich, dollar-strewn new world?

How else to explain City’s private court case against the Premier League? City already face 115 charges brought against them by the top tier of English football but it’s not as if they have done badly out of top-flight football. They have won six out of the last seven titles and are said to have the highest commercial revenue of any club. But now they are saying: ‘You come for us and we’re going for you.’

The key part of the City claim relates to a loveable little feature called........

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