So, boys and girls, what do we all think about Manchester City’s incredible midweek Champions League collapse?

Well, it’s confession time from me. With three minutes to go, I switched off the TV and went to bed only to wake up in the morning and find out I had missed one of the most remarkable comebacks in modern football history. That will teach me to never jump to any conclusions where football is concerned.

A lot of people have been saying over the last couple of days that the best team lost, and that City deserved to go through to the final. But surely, by definition, the better team is the one that progresses to the next round, irrespective of how they get there.

Were Real Madrid outplayed for much of the two legs? Absolutely. Did City have more than enough chances to put the tie beyond their opponents? Without a doubt. But City didn’t take enough of those chances, while Real never gave up despite being under the cosh.

Of course, this latest failure to win the Champions League raises new questions about Pep Guardiola. Although many still regard him as the greatest of all time (GOAT), there are increasing doubts about his European record.

Yes, he won Europe’s top prize twice while at Barcelona. But the last of those was more than a decade ago. Despite being in charge of an otherwise all-dominant Bayern Munich and a Manchester City with immense spending power, he hasn’t lifted the trophy since 2011.

Despite being in charge of an otherwise all-dominant Bayern Munich and a Manchester City with immense spending power, he hasn’t lifted the trophy since 2011

I am not suggesting he isn’t a good manager. But anybody who hand-picks his appointments like Pep does and who has genuine aspirations to be the GOAT needs to be picking up more than domestic titles and trophies. But that’s a tale for another day.

What last week’s remarkable semi-finals have certainly done is served as a reminder that the Champions League is a beautiful competition. And we now have a rather mouth-watering final on our hands come the end of the month.

Liverpool will go into it as slight favourites. But after seeing what Real have done to Paris Saint-Germain, Chelsea and now Manchester City, I am pretty sure Jurgen Klopp will be taking nothing for granted.

And I won’t be going to bed until the trophy has been engraved and paraded round the pitch….

Time to end Premier parachute payments

I’ve long been of the belief that the Premier League’s parachute payment system is creating imbalance in the Championship, and this season has only further served to confirm that.

The two teams that secured automatic promotion to the top-flight this season – Fulham and Bournemouth – have done so while enjoying the bonus of parachute payments.

Some of their success will be down to shrewd management, of course, but I guarantee you that the fact that both of those clubs banked a cheque for tens of millions this season is a huge contributing factor – a factor that is distorting the entire division. In fact, a recent report said that teams receiving these parachute payments are three times more likely to get promoted than those that don’t have this additional income.

And that is not even vaguely surprising when you read on and find out that the average revenue of a club without the payments is £14 million, while those with the payments are generating £52 million. It is a huge and unfair difference.

I understand that the idea behind these payments was to soften the blow on clubs that have gone down. When you are in the Premier you need to pay higher wages to attract better players, and those wages have the potential to be crippling to clubs that drop down a division.

But protecting relegated teams should not come at the expense of the integrity of the entire league competition. And that is what is happening now. More worryingly, the parachute payments are also having a knock-on effect on the finances of the other clubs who find themselves spending beyond their means to try and keep up.

In an effort to compete with the parachute-backed clubs, the rest push themselves too far and overstretch their resources. This has seen previously stable clubs like Derby County and Sheffield Wednesday practically driven into the ground as they try to keep up with teams with bigger – unfairly inflated – budgets.

So, what’s the solution? I’m not entirely sure. The Football League wants the parachute payments to be abolished and, instead, have a chunk of the top flight’s TV revenue distributed among all lower league clubs.

While that may sound logical, it isn’t going to solve the aforementioned wage issue, which is a genuine problem. So maybe a hybrid system with all EFL clubs given a chunk of PL cash, but the relegated ones also given a percentage of wage costs in the season after they go down; but only if they can prove they need it.

On second thoughts, that might encourage clubs to overspend while they are in the Premier; so that probably isn’t a sustainable solution either.

There will always be clubs in the league who have more spending power than others, clubs with bigger crowds, richer owners and those that are well run on a commercial level.

But there must be some way of solving this parachute problem so the majority of Championship clubs don’t start the season knowing they only have a third of the chance of going up as the ex-Premier League clubs.

E-mail: james@quizando.com

Twitter: @maltablade