Across the road from the vertiginous south stand of Manchester City’s stadium, a glut of conspiracy theories was already swirling among the early-afternoon loyalists at Mary D’s Bar.

Minutes after opening its doors at midday on Saturday, the landlord, Mick Kehoe, was rehearsing the already well-versed sense of persecution that had gripped the club’s supporters since the unwanted news of the night before.

The Friday evening bulletins had revealed that Manchester City had been banned from the Champions League for the next two seasons after being judged to have committed “serious breaches” of Uefa’s financial fair play regulations.

Kehoe was fuming. “A lot of City fans are feeling that their club has been made a scapegoat. We feel there’s a bit of jealousy, a bit of conspiracy, because Uefa have always had it in for us,” said the 62-year-old whose pub is the closest to the Etihad Stadium.

Manchester City fans walk past Mary D’s. Photograph: Carl Recine/Action Images via Reuters

In fact, the hostelry was serving drinks to east Manchester for close to a decade before the stadium was built in 2002. Now, on match days, it is crammed to its 1,200 capacity by supporters, many of whom will crave more than ever that their club should lift the Champions League trophy in three months’ time.

“What’s happened is seismic, but what actually happens if City win the biggest competition in Europe this year and then the Premier League next year and the year after?”

Five minutes’ walk from May D’s lies another famous City pub, The Townley. Inside, licensee Pauline Carroll was similarly seething. And, like Kehoe, the 50-year-old was not slow to share the sense that her club, the reigning Premier League champions, had been unfairly targeted by Uefa following simmering tensions since 2014 when City were fined £49m for a previous breach of regulations.

“There’s a prejudice against City and it’s not the first time Uefa have had it in for us. My two sons reacted in pure disbelief when they heard; and, talking to people on social media and various supporters groups, everyone agrees it’s just a way of getting at us. The worst thing is that a lot of people were not even that surprised,” said Carroll.

It's naked protectionism, to stop others getting to the top table. I can't think of any other business where an owner of a company would be prevented from investing in their own commercial concern Dave Walker, fan

In a robust statement issued shortly after Uefa’s decision was made public, even the club said they were “not surprised” by the judgment. Describing the punishment as “prejudicial”, Manchester City have said they will appeal against the penalty, which also includes a €30m (£25m) fine.

Carroll said that the refrain among her regulars was that City had been persistently singled out in a way other clubs were not. “The consensus is that everybody’s against us,” she said.

Like Kehoe, she was serving locals before the gleaming stadium appeared and has relished her club’s evolution into one of Europe’s football superpowers after its acquisition in 2008 by Sheikh Mansour, brother of Sheikh Mohammed, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi.

But Carroll said Friday’s judgment held ramifications that were not just sporting. The Townley can hold up to 450 people on a match day, including 100 in the beer garden, producing takings of up to £4,000 on a Champions League night.

Some of those who attend the club’s European fixtures travel for hours. Dave Walker, 56, journeys from Worcestershire. He claimed that the financial fair play regulations City were found guilty of breaching were crafted to ensure that clubs like City could not gatecrash the “old order” of Europe’s most successful clubs.

“It’s naked protectionism, to stop others getting to the top table. I can’t think of any other business where an owner of a company would be prevented from investing in their own commercial concern. Say Sheikh Mansour was an industrialist, would there really be a body saying: ‘You’re only allowed to invest the profits you make and nothing else’?”

He agreed that enmity between Uefa and Manchester City had been building since the 2014 fine, noting that the club’s supporters already booed the Uefa Champions League anthem before kick-off

“Now, it’s all-out war, there’s no velvet gloves. It’s us against Uefa and it’s all coming to a head.”