All or nothing Manchester City should either be vindicated or damned by hearing

Let's start by going back to December 2016.

- Sean Ingle

And a gathering of the world's media in London to hear lurid details of how more than 1,000 Russian athletes cheated across 30 sports with the help of spies, a cocktail of steroids mixed with whisky and vermouth, and massive state interference.

First the law professor Richard McLaren tells us that London 2012 was "corrupted on an unprecedented scale". Then he reminds us that, at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, an agent from the FSB, Russia's security service, was disguised as a plumber and used a mouse hole in the walls of an anti-doping lab to switch drug-tainted samples for clean ones.

"It is impossible to know just how deep and how far back this conspiracy goes," McLaren tells us. "Coaches and athletes have been playing on an uneven field. Sports fans and spectators have been deceived."

We know what happened next. Unprecedented crimes led to unprecedented punishments. Dozens of Russians were stripped of their medals and their country's flag, anthem and officials were banned from the Olympics, the first time that had happened to a country.

Now just imagine if McLaren had instead said: 'You know what? We should only drop Russian athletes 15 places in this year's world rankings. But they can keep their medals and compete next year.' He would have been laughed out the room.

I bring this up because the biggest sports trial since Russia was in the dock has just got under way, with Manchester City facing 115 Premier League charges, but already there is a sense of fudge in the air.