Manchester City lead the Premier League by two points, despite at certain points during the season clearly showing they are the top side in England, and not just in their bank account but by quality of football, right, even better then the never ending Manchester United. According to Patrick Vieira, a possible conspiracy to stop them from winning the title could eventually derail Roberto Mancini and his title aspirations.

Vieira mostly means the bans slapped on against Vincent Kompany for his clean yet dangerous tackle in the FA Cup against Manchester United and Mario Balotelli, for his stomp on Scott Parker that somehow Howard Webb missed, although it is Webb, so we shouldn’t be surprised. Balotelli? The guy is simply a punk, and nothing he does, good and bad, surprises me. Kompany? That was a dangerous precedent sent with that red card, that shouldn’t have happened.

Vieira, who spent the last 18 months of his career with Manchester City, is currently the football development executive at the club and also holds somewhat of an ambassador role, which no one really knows what that means.

I don’t want to think about it because I don’t want to say that everyone is against City or anything like that. But when you look at the last few decisions, you are asking yourself if something is wrong here, if people don’t want us to win the league. We try our best to win the league, we accept our punishment.

But when you look what is happening to the other ones, that makes us as a football club really frustrated. The one for Kompany was one of the harshest decisions I’ve ever seen in the last few months. Frank Lampard’s tackle looked dangerous compared to Vincent’s. Crouch, when he put his finger in the eye of another player, looked bad as well.

It felt like that anything that City will do will be amplified and we get punished, compared to the other teams and the other players. When you see the last few decisions and everything is against us, compared to the other ones. It seems like if you have one referee you get one decision but if you have a different referee the decision may also be different. It’s difficult to understand some decisions compared to the decisions we had. I think this is what brings the confusion. The confusion is dangerous for our game.

In general, he has a point about City being treated harsher so far for similar cases, which get written off or softly taken into account for other teams. Conspiracy? I find that hard to believe, but strange things usually happen when you’re in a title race with Manchester United and Alex Ferguson. Despite all the hatred towards them, United are seen as the better option for a “fair” champion than City, mostly because of their Gulf money, and nothing else.