Man City deserve their Champions League ban- but this should be just the start for UEFA

The two-year Champions League ban UEFA have ­handed Manchester City for flouting FFP rules is absolutely right.

They’ve have been found guilty of breaking the laws of the competition and anyone convicted of such offences should face a similar punishment.

But even if I don’t agree with the way City have gone about trying to bludgeon their way into becoming Champions League contenders, I do have some sympathy with them and the other new-money clubs who are trying to break into what has been a closed shop for far too long.

What I’d like to see next from UEFA, then, is European football’s governing body taking a ­sledgehammer to the top table at which the ­old-school money dines.

The cabal of the G14 clubs has had things its own way for too long now and I have absolute sympathy with the likes of City, Chelsea and Paris Saint-Germain who are seeking entry to a lock-in to which they haven’t been invited.

They’ve taken the view, ‘Well, why shouldn’t we be allowed in, why can’t we have inward investment?’ And I understand that wholly.

But that has created a problem in itself with the ­traditional Champions League big boys feeling such pressure to maintain the status quo that we now have everyone ­looking at every which way to enhance their incredible revenue streams – and that is when boundaries start getting pushed and loopholes looked for.

Somewhere along the line, common sense has to prevail in all of this and we need to ask whether we want any entity, whether it’s Manchester United, City, Liverpool, Barcelona, Real Madrid, or PSG winning the Champions League year after year.

Do we really want a closed shop or do we want more Leicesters?

At the moment, it seems to be a case of, ‘Aston Villa, Steaua Bucharest, Nottingham Forest? No thanks. We just want Barcelona to keep winning it’.

When the Champions League came to be, Forest had won more European Cups than Barcelona but the big clubs have closed the ­competition off to such an extent that there’s next to no chance of a Leicester-esque miracle anytime soon. What is needed is some sort of ­reset, a default setting, to get back some competitiveness.

Because if we don’t have that ­sometime soon then we’re basically saying, ‘We just don’t like City because they’re the new kids on the block ­getting into the party, but we’re quite happy to let United, Barca, Real, Bayern and Liverpool carve things up for themselves’.

The situation needs UEFA to be ballsy enough to say, ‘We’ll continue to make you money, we’ll get it and spread it evenly over clubs.

‘But if you lot keep coming here every year ­demanding another £100million and threatening to speak to Middle Eastern bodies about ­starting a global league if you don’t get it, then off you go and start a global league’.

Because there is no way it would be sustainable for, say, United to play a global tournament and be sustainable in an English league, so in that ­regards UEFA should call their bluff.

It’s not just United in the ­cabal, I have to be honest and say Liverpool are in it as well.

So it’s all very well me getting ­excited when my old club wins the Champions League, but I don’t think Liverpool fans would ultimately be as happy with winning a 10th European Cup down the line if there was a one in 10 chance of winning it rather than one in 40.

So hopefully this is the beginning of a big change across Europe.

My fear if I was a City fan would be that, in the short term, if the ban is upheld then we could lose any of Pep Guardiola, Kevin De Bruyne, Sergio Aguero and Raheem Sterling.

And if I was manager of, ironically, any of the other G14 clubs, I’d have been excitedly ringing my chairman or owner this weekend asking if we could chance a bid for one of those players.

Guardiola might just be stubborn enough to say he’ll stick it out and build a club that wins the Treble while it’s out of Europe then goes full ­throttle for the Champions League to stick two fingers up to everyone.

But let’s not pretend many players really give a damn about their clubs, they care only about being where they can win trophies.