Manchester City rebuffing Bayern Munich over Leroy Sane is real progress

The German champions are keen to recruit the talented winger this summer

Clubs need to sell is becoming less of a factor and it benefits the competition

Not everything at Manchester City is new. There are still people at the club who remember what it was like before Sheik Mansour came along.

They remember the 2004-05 season, for instance. It wasn't the worst. The club lost its manager, Kevin Keegan, in March because he announced his desire to retire from football. Yet his successor, Stuart Pearce, made a creditable start and only lost out on a UEFA Cup place when Robbie Fowler had a penalty in stoppage time to win a match against Middlesbrough on the last day of the season but missed.

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Eighth was a reasonable finish and although the domestic cups were a disappointment - City were beaten in the FA Cup third round by Oldham - the club had the third-highest average attendance in the Premier League and its season revenue was the 17th highest in the world.

Manchester City telling Bayern Munich to get lost over Leroy Sane shows their progress

And they had this little gem: Shaun Wright-Phillips. He had been at the club from the age of 17 and between 2000 and 2003 won its Young Player of the Year award four times straight. That season Wright-Phillips played 37 games, scored 11 goals and broke into the England team. Then Chelsea bought him for £21m in the summer and put him in their reserve team - because they could.

That is what football is like, or it was for City until they acquired the muscle to look after themselves. Now when Bayern Munich come calling for Leroy Sane, City can tell them to get lost, at least until the price suits.

That is progress. That is fairer. That is why the elite clubs hate new money and will do all they can to crush it.

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They do not want your club to be financially strong or independent. They prefer the good old days when the power of a privileged cabal was irresistible. They even liked 2011, Sheik Mansour in charge, but before his investment took effect.

City hadn't won the Premier League or qualified for the Champions League back then, meaning Munich could agitate and unsettle Jerome Boateng, who eventually left for less than was being asked because it was plain his head had been turned.

Maybe that will happen with Sane, too. Yet these days City have the clout to say no and mean it. If Munich cannot afford what City want for Sane, City are no longer compelled to acquiesce. They can resist on principle if they wish.

The more clubs that could do this, the more the talent would be spread, the better for football. The elite despise it, of course, and perpetuate the falsehood that clubs can grow naturally, without the protection of a wealthy owner. But that's a myth.

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Jerome Boateng was enticed to Bayern and out of Manchester City

But the club are a different proposition now and do not need to let Sane leave

The organic growth of football clubs doesn't happen in the modern game because before a club has the chance to succeed with its expertly developed or recruited team, it is ransacked by the rich.

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If Southampton could have grown organically, at some stage it might have fielded a team with Nathaniel Clyne, Virgil van Dijk, Dejan Lovren and Luke Shaw at the back, Morgan Schneiderlin and Victor Wanyama in deep midfield, Jay Rodriguez, Dusan Tadic and Adam Lallana further forward, Sadio Mane up front. That, potentially, challenges for the title. Certainly, it has a swing at a Champions League place.

Southampton never came near to playing a group as strong as that, however, because before an XI had time to form it was sold off piecemeal. It was the same at Everton; the same at West Ham.

Whatever might have been achieved with Wayne Rooney or later John Stones, or Rio Ferdinand, Frank Lampard, Michael Carrick and Joe Cole, never stood a chance.

Big clubs have always preyed on smaller ones, that is football's way, but no one can argue it is healthy for competition. In an ideal world, just as City have the strength to resist Bayern Munich over Sane, Schalke would have had the ability to keep the player from City in 2016.

This is, in part, why Premier League wealth so frightens the upper echelons of Europe. They can't pick off individuals any more, not even their own.

Clubs like Crystal Palace no longer need to generate funds by selling stars like Wilfried Zaha

Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang is being linked with a move to China but would be out of the price range of much of the Bundesliga or Serie A. We hear Juventus want Paul Pogba but cannot afford him, Inter Milan want Romelu Lukaku but cannot afford him.

And while small clubs will continue losing players to big clubs, the need to cash in at any price is being reduced.

Chelsea will sell Eden Hazard to Real Madrid but what if they wanted to replace him with Wilfried Zaha? Would Crystal Palace have to sell? Not until the price was right. Southampton held out for a world record fee for Van Dijk. It isn't a perfect solution but football is better for advances in financial independence.

The Sane negotiation and how hard Munich are being made to work are signs of a changed dynamic. The more money that comes into the game, even from outside through owner investment, the more clubs that can see off predators, the better the competition will be.

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Put it like this: if Phil Foden had come through 15 years ago, where would he be now? It wouldn't be Manchester City.

Why Eriksen's not in top bracket

Christian Eriksen is a very good player. An £80million player? Pricey. A £130m player? Are you kidding?

Daniel Levy is known to drive a hard bargain but if he gets that, or anything like it for Eriksen, he should be seconded to Westminster and handed lead role in the Brexit negotiations.

If the figures for Eden Hazard are right, to peg Eriksen at roughly a third less seems reasonable. Hazard has propelled Chelsea to league titles and European trophies; Eriksen has not won so much as a domestic cup with Tottenham.

That is not solely his fault, obviously, but one might have imagined a player of his calibre providing the defining moment in one match of trophy-winning significance across six seasons.

Christian Eriksen has not won a single domestic or European trophy while at Tottenham

Tottenham chased an equaliser in the Champions League final for 88 minutes until Liverpool scored their second last Saturday. Where was Eriksen? Where was his influence? Where was the spark of genius that might have swayed the game in Tottenham's direction?

He is a lovely, technical player, but the greatest clubs in Europe have those in abundance. Philippe Coutinho found how difficult it was to go to Barcelona and stand out. Eriksen has never scored more than 10 goals in a Premier League season, and has only reached double figures twice. He has made the PFA's Team of the Year once.

He is very influential for Tottenham and Levy's asking price may reflect that and what any replacement might cost - but, looking at the competition, there is better value to be had by Eriksen's suitors.

Large salaries can't justify endless season for top players

Fred Allen, an American radio comedian, called his autobiography Treadmill To Oblivion. It could equally be used to describe our never-ending football seasons.

Yet suggest the players are being worked to the point of exhaustion and it is immediately argued their rewards make this justifiable.

It really is the most foolish logic. Pay does not increase human levels of stamina. We could make nurses millionaires, but it wouldn't mean they could perform 16-hour shifts with adequate care.

At the end of a marathon, Sir Mo Farah could not run another, no matter how much we paid him.

It is the same with footballers. Some may earn £200,000 a week but that does not buy extra energy. You may think you would work harder for more money, but you would still have a finite physical capacity.

'Anyone who plays will not be 100 per cent,' said Virgil van Dijk of Thursday night's UEFA Nations League semi-final. Players will admit that by a certain stage in the season - and it is not late - nobody is at full capacity. Many are nursing injuries, energy levels are low.

Yet we continue adding games and tournaments and commitments, and some stupidly imagine the money is a cloak of invincibility. It's just money; it's not magic.

More money does not mean athletes like Sir Mo Farah can suddenly perform more regularly

Uber have released an anthem 'to energise the World Cup's cricket fans'. If they'd release the $21 they owe me for that bloke who didn't turn up in New York two weeks ago, I'd be a lot more impressed.

Russia hit with further drug test failures

Memorably, at the start of the Ronnie Barker comedy series Porridge the judge passes sentence on Norman Stanley Fletcher, describing him as a 'habitual criminal'.

Russian sport is full of them. The country is populated with habitual criminals in their use of performance-enhancing drugs, and propped up by more habitual criminals inside the network that enables them.

This starts at the top with the highest ranking government officials, and bleeds down throughout to the coaches and minions, who swapped tainted samples to cover up the extraordinary level of systemic abuse.

Latest to be exposed is the men's high jump world indoor record holder, Danil Lysenko. It is alleged Russian officials falsified documents to cover up a whereabouts failure. This conspiracy extended to inventing a medical facility and using an address that was a demolition site.

It is thought this revelation will prevent Russia being reinstated in time for the IAAF World Championships in Doha in September. Given their previous, Russia, like Fletcher, must consider bans and absences an occupational hazard.

Time for United to break bank

Just because Daniel James is a 21-year-old from Swansea and not a marquee name does not mean he will be the answer to Manchester United's problems.

James is a lively winger, endorsed by Ryan Giggs - who should know one - and may turn out a snip at £17million. Equally, he may be swallowed up by the challenge of United's rebuild. At least he doesn't have the weight of colossal expectation on his shoulders.

The fact remains, though, that if United are doing battle with Europe's elite - as they intend for Matthijs de Ligt - the only way to win with a season of Europa League football ahead is to pay through the nose. James did not have a Barcelona option. De Ligt does.

It is going to cost a fortune - in agents' fees, transfer fees and wages - to get him.

Manchester United face paying a fortune to bring Dutch defender Matthijs de Ligt to the club

Advance Australia where, protestors?

At the State of Origin rugby league game in Brisbane this week, 11 of 34 players boycotted the singing of the Australian national anthem.

Most were indigenous Australians, protesting at the line that airbrushes their ancestors out of history. The anthem, Advance Australia Fair, begins: 'Australians all let us rejoice, for we are young and free…'

Protesters rightly point out there was nothing young about the people already occupying that territory when the new settlers arrived. Not much free in what happened to them next, either. This movement has led to calls for the words to be amended, or for the anthem to be replaced entirely.

Never forget, however, that Advance Australia Fair was only chosen in a national plebiscite in 1977, when the country deliberated on replacing God Save The Queen. The current anthem received 43.3 per cent of the vote - although in second place was Waltzing Matilda, the tale of a potless wandering itinerant who nicks a sheep and then tops himself before the police get there.

Be careful what you wish for would appear to be the advice here.

There are more than two outcomes in a two-horse race; it is always possible the result is a draw. And even with one candidate on the ballot paper there is an election alternative: not to vote at all. Yet FIFA did away with all dissent this week by returning president Gianni Infantino through acclamation.

No protest can be heard in a room full of cheerleaders. 'It is not possible any longer for FIFA to do anything unethical,' Infantino duly declared. He doesn't even do irony, let alone ethics.

Gianni Infantino ran unopposed as he was re-elected as FIFA president at a meeting in Paris

The problem with the FA campaign, 'Don't be that Idiot', is that it presumes an evolutionary process.

The suggestion is a reasonable, socially responsible individual turns into one who drinks to boorish, violent excess and acts without consideration for fellow human beings. That isn't the case.

A good person doesn't suddenly become one who throws a bottle at a group of locals peacefully watching their team in a bar. He's already a thug and just needs enough fuel to bring out his true nature.

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'Getting into the minds of the mindless,' Jack Charlton once called the desire to reason with hooligans, and he was right. The FA were talking about graduation to men who qualified long ago. Don't be that idiot? Too late, sadly, too late.