The development of Bukayo Saka shows there is an alternative to chucking £100million at as many players as possible

PEOPLE are discussing what penalties Manchester City should face if they are found guilty of more than 100 financial offences: a points deduction, relegation or a fine.

The first thing to say is that there is no point fining any rich person. It means those with the ability to pay up without breaking sweat will just carry on doing the bad things. Like a Porsche guy on yellow lines in Kensington completely unbothered by a parking ticket, because… he’s got a Porsche.

Secondly, as funny as it would be to see the faces of everybody who hates Arsenal, don’t deduct City points. It would remove any sense of achievement in what the Gunners are trying to do this season. One of the great things about the 1991 league title win was Arsenal got deducted two points for biffing a few Manchester United players in a match but still won the championship.

It wouldn’t feel so superior to win because somebody else had points taken away this season.

So that I’m afraid, Manchester City, means you must be relegated at the end of the season. This would be the only real sensible solution, putting City back to where they were before they were showered with obscene amounts of money from an ownership with links to a country with a dubious human rights record.

We all remember City in their natural place, yo-yoing around with Shaun Goater up front.

You’d certainly not see a glory-support child on the school run down here in London asking for a City top and bag. The first time I saw one of them in Camden, I took the parent or guardian aside to give them a stern word on how they were bringing up their child celebrating unrestrained capitalism and worshipping nothing but a monster made of money.

The parent or guardian told me that this was easy for me to say, but he was City and I had not grown up watching Gary Megson, Uwe Rosler and somebody called Wayne Biggins, who a check on Google later confirmed was a real person.

Could their seven-year-old go back to their chocolate cake now? Fair enough, I said, but I didn’t mean it because City are too far gone. We do not need this investigation to understand that this club’s way of shooting to success was ugly and immoral, titles won with no sense of achievement.

You may say Arsenal are just as bad, they all are etc.

But maybe the sight of Gabriel Martinelli signing a new contract this week proves otherwise; a player carefully scouted and brought in for a modest fee rather than chucking £100million at as many players as possible.

The development of Bukayo Saka and William Saliba also shows there is a more creative, authentic method.