Man City lawyer banner shows football fandom has hit pantomime

levels

Pannick on the streets of London’, read the banner at

Manchester City; a pretty good joke that repoints a lyric from
The Smiths to pay tribute to Lord Pannick, who will be
representing the club vs the Premier League as they do battle
against allegations that they have breached its financial rules.
Time was when fan banners lauded goalscorers and midfield
generals and it’s not hard to see why some people find it a bit
ridiculous that football fans are lionising a man whose career
path into City’s affections was less “youth team and then a
loan move to Girona before breaking into the Carabao Cup
squad” and more “Hertford College Oxford, called to the Bar,
and then appointed a crossbench peer in the House of Lords”.
But we are where we are and given that City's solitary
acquisition in the January transfer window was 20-year-old Maximo Perrone for the chump-change sum of eight million
quid, you can understand why the faithful are desperate to welcome a new hero.

A hard-tackling but cultured legal mind equally adept on the left or the right, Panno – as he is surely known to the lads in
the City dressing room – has had previous spells with the Sunday Times in the Spycatcher case, representing kink-shamed
fash scion Max Mosley in the European Court of Human Rights, and more recently an appearance on behalf of Isis banter
queen Shamima Begum in the Supreme Court. 

Panno has also plied his trade for Gina Miller in her Brexit battle, when she forced parliament to legislate before Article 50
could be invoked – something of a giant-killing you have to say – and for BBC director-general Mark Thompson when an
attempt was made to prosecute the BBC for blasphemy in broadcasting Jerry Springer: The Opera. It all adds up to a
magnificent career at the top, top level and the consensus has to be that Panno is what Harry Redknapp would identify as a
triffic little lawyer.

Panno had already won the hearts of Man City fans by

successfully helping the club overturn a Uefa ban a
couple of years ago. That massive 2020 smash-and-
grab away win at the Court of Arbitration for Sport was
arguably Man City’s best result in Europe since 1969-
1970 Cup Winners’ Cup Final (not that there have been
all that many continental highlights since Neil Young’s
tap-in and Franny Lee’s penalty put Górnik Zabrze to
the sword). Who’s to say they cannot pull off another
triumph in Panno’s second spell?

They say never go back in football but if anyone can do

it, Panno can. He is what Graeme Souness might call a
Proper Brief. The star barrister at Blackstone Chambers, it has been reported that Panno can command fees of £20,000 a
day; once it is explained to his new Premier League team-mates that this is actually a lot of money and not the sort of
wages that puts a person in foodbank territory, it all adds up to the renewal and deepening of a beautiful friendship.

While entirely acknowledging that there is something a bit Football Manager saddo about cheering your club’s
appointment of a very expensive lawyer to help you out of a self-inflicted financial governance jam, it surely remains at
least possible that the City banner boys were having a bit of a laugh, that tongues were somewhere in the vicinity of cheeks.
The alternative is that football tribalism has become so completely insane, that club loyalties really are extending to
cheering the choice of highly-paid legal counsel engaged by the billionaire owners. If that really is the case then, sure, burn
down the disco.