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Manchester City and their fans are entitled to feel aggrieved.

Tonight, the Blues can take a giant step closer to winning one of the most thrilling title races of recent years in English football.

If they thrash Aston Villa at the Etihad, City could become the only team to join the Chelsea of 2009-10 in scoring 100 goals in a Premier League season.

It would be more proof that they have played some ­wonderfully swashbuckling ­football on their way to the top.

And yet, City are the ­champions-elect we all forgot.

They are the side that got lost as we followed the compelling ­narrative of Liverpool’s underdog attempt to win their first title for 24 years.

City are the team with a boss who kept quiet while Jose ­Mourinho took all the attention with his talking and posturing.

City are the team who kept on amassing points while so many of us were captivated by the ­spectacle of the thousands lining Anfield Road before every home game, trying to will Liverpool to the title.

They are the club with the narrative of their own, the club that established itself ­incontrovertibly as the leading team in Manchester as United fell from grace.

And even now ­Liverpool and Chelsea have faded from the picture, still the ­headlines are not about City’s ­excellence.

Instead, it’s about the estimated £49million fine UEFA are set to attempt to impose on them for breaching Financial Fair Play ­regulations.

Something is wrong with FFP if it punishes a regime that is pouring millions into the ­regeneration of a deprived area of East Manchester.

(Image: Action Images)

Nobody is suggesting that Sheikh Mansour and his cohorts are driven by altruism but ­whatever their motives, it is hard not to admire much of what is happening at City.

Their youth set-up is so ­impressive, former United players are sending their kids to train there. They are pouring funds into a women’s team in the WSL, too. Their campus is a centre of ­excellence, a model of the way forward.

That is the problem with FFP - it enshrines the principle that might is right, big equals good. It seeks to perpetuate the hegemony of the clubs with the most supporters and the most revenue. There is no fantasy about it.

City’s story represents the dream of every downtrodden club, every poor relation - that one day it can be propelled to the top.

It has happened in front of us at Manchester City, and all UEFA want to do is punish them for it.

They distrust the rise of smaller clubs. It threatens their vested interests.

The irony is City stand on the brink of an achievement that deserves to be celebrated more than anything else they have done. They have gone head-to-head with a Liverpool side that appeared to have an unstoppable momentum and they seem to have outlasted them.

This is not the often-pragmatic side marshalled by Roberto Mancini. This is a team of ­wonderfully skilful players Manuel Pellegrini has moulded into a breathtaking attacking unit.

Some of their football towards the turn of the year was sublime.

They were at their unstoppable best when they could pair Sergio Aguero, whose season has been disrupted by injury, and Alvaro Negredo in attack.

In November and December, they stuck seven past Norwich, six past Tottenham, four past Fulham and six past Arsenal.

This is a team overflowing with flair, with the likes of David Silva, Samir Nasri, Jesus Navas.

This is a team that has the might and grace of Yaya Toure at its heart.

If City hold their nerve and win their second title in three years at the Etihad on Sunday, forget the petty objections of the joyless bureaucrats at UEFA.

Because it will be a triumph for a team that represents the best of football.