From the trollograph….some prick called alan tyers….
‘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.