For all the brouhaha around Manchester City and their alleged misconduct, nobody in football wants them neutered like a dog.
I spoke to a handful of owners to establish the mood. While there is a desire for City to face consequences if they are found guilty of the charges brought by the Premier League, there is no witch-hunt.
You might think there's jealousy because of the money they have deployed in becoming the most handsome team in the best league. There isn't. Pep Guardiola might think so, but his views are also misplaced.
There is demand for action to follow swiftly rather than being tied up in legal cross-talk. Let's not dance around, force action quickly. The eyes of the world are on the Premier League like never before.
The Qatari interest in Manchester United, the existing financial power of City, Newcastle and Chelsea, the proposed interest in Tottenham, and Liverpool and possibly Everton up for sale.
Getting our house in order has never been more paramount. Setting the rules and applying them with rigour and vigour.
The epicentre of this right now is Manchester. The irony is that this is one of the great industrial cities. A working-class city with a socialist mayor – no not de facto mayor Gary Neville, but Andy Burnham no less – being at the forefront of football's globalisation.
City have always been in United's shadow and paint themselves in a different way. In their minds they're the earthy, valiant side of Manchester. And now they have a very different feel.
Integrity, value and sporting chance hold sport together. So let's not muck about – City are accused of breaking those fundamentals.
If they are guilty and if, through a variety of mechanisms they are able to overcome sporting chance, what does that say about our iconic League?
This is a fight for football's soul. Do we have standards? Expectations of ownership? A belief that it doesn't matter who owns our clubs as long as they have an inordinate amount of money?
The Premier League champions and owners of our most iconic club should be held to the highest standards.
If City exonerate themselves, it must be done without some technicality, subterfuge or delaying tactics. Otherwise there must be serious consequences. If they are found guilty of the bulk of these charges then nothing should be off the table.
Anything else is a whitewash. You don't get found guilty and charged by UEFA, have to go to CAS and fight battles with the judicial system to block journalists from hearings, get dragged into a Premier League investigation and charged without there needing to be a definitive outcome.
If our champions aren't beyond reproach, what does it say about us?
I was Crystal Palace owner when we played City in the League Cup in 2009 and it was billed as the haves versus the have-nots. I bristled at that. I don't think people in football are as small-minded as popular myth would have you believe. Resistance only follows if rules are being broken or circumstances manipulated.
Maybe I was naïve but I wasn't resistant to City becoming a powerhouse. Sheikh Mansour was given the opportunity of breathing life into a carcass of a club. There is nothing wrong with great wealth coming into football if it is regulated properly, allowing the whole game to flourish rather than one super-rich state-owned club doing as it pleases.
Which takes us into the heart of Manchester. You've got the elite team, City, being challenged by what they perceive to be the establishment about their approach and you've got our biggest club, United, potentially becoming state-owned by a country that also owns Paris Saint-Germain.
The Premier League cannot be allowed to become a wild west that destroys everything beneath it. So City's battle with the Premier League - and Manchester United's imminent sale - is far bigger than people realise. We're talking about the last vestiges of the fight for English football's soul.
But do we believe these clubs - who owns them, how they conduct themselves, how their players behave and what they represent - are being owned, developed and moved forward in the 21st century with those ideals?
Do we have to accept it's a free-for-all now? Does it mean everything we own, everything that is valuable to this country and defines us is going to be lost to globalisation? English football and what it represents then becomes very blurred and loses the principles that put it where it is.
That's not me being xenophobic. It's a lament that everything good in this country ends up being owned by everybody else. It didn't work out how I would have liked at Palace but everything I tried was about adding value and building a club that reflected the community that I came from.
I fear we are moving away from that dramatically. It may be the reality of how everything in society goes but it's something we should be trying to hold a line on.
We should always demand the highest standards. That's why it's so important City are cleared – or suffer the consequences. Surely even the most myopic, obtuse City fans can see that? Forget the conspiracy theories and lose the victim complex. The world is not against them.
We need to remember the bigger picture. This isn't Serie A, LaLiga or the puffed-up French League, it's the Premier League. We expect better, don't we?
WARNOCK AND ME WAS MARRIAGE MADE IN HEAVEN!
When I appointed Neil Warnock as Crystal Palace manager in 2007 he advised me it would be his last job in football. He's now on his eighth club since then.
People said Neil and me, two of football's most combustible characters, was a marriage made in hell. It proved anything but.
I loved working with him. He's a damn good manager and far more than a firefighter.
There's often islands at every club. On one side the directors and chairman, on the other the football operation. Neil doesn't have that mentality. He unites clubs. He sits in both camps and brings everyone with him.
If ours was a marriage made in hell, then it's till death do us part for Neil because they'll end up carrying him out of a football club.
WEBB CAN SOLVE VAR FARCE
There were two appalling decisions last weekend. Predictably, VAR was hammered by the usual suspects but incompetence was to blame. Nothing else.
I've heard some argue – step forward Danny Murphy - that players should vote on it. Don't be bloody silly Danny, they're busy, they'd send their agents.
Critics are not talking about VAR anyway, but the human interaction with it.
The tragedy for referees is that everyone else is allowed to make mistakes. Managers, owners, players are allowed but a referee isn't.
And by the way, VAR only came about because of incessant complaining about referees.
The idea that referees are immune to making human errors is ridiculous.
No one seems interested in solutions, but perhaps Howard Webb is the solution. He's a leader and is on the front foot.
Seemingly, to the likes of Gary Lineker and Alan Shearer and all those who have never, ever made a mistake in their life, there is zero tolerance for individual mistakes but errors are always going to be made.
