So you agree with Richard Keys’ remark that “the game has gone mad?” Maybe not the former Sky Sports man’s views on that female linesman or Karren Brady, but the broader sentiment expressed.

Birmingham City fans may well ponder the current mental health of football, rather than the current mental health of Mr Keys and his ex-sidekick Andy Gray, and reflect on its wider implications for the world.

The St Andrew’s club is owned by Chinese parent group Birmingham International Holdings, which suspended its shares on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on January 5, pending an announcement.

Share dealing resumed last week after details of the proposed sale of a property development by Blues supremo Carson Yeung were released in the most extraordinary example of corporate speak devised this side of a North Korean military manual.

“The purchaser, the vendor and the guarantors entered into the agreement pursuant to which the purchaser conditionally agreed to purchase and the vendor conditionally agreed to sell the sale shares, representing the entire issued share capital of the target company, at an aggregate consideration of not less than RMB430,947,000 but not more than RMB1,332,018,000, subject to adjustment......”

Pardon? Not exactly Keep Right On To The End Of The Road, is it?

It transpired that this was Chinese Whispers speak for the proposed sale of a property development by Carson Yeung for up to £125 million to Birmingham International Holdings which may, or may not, help generate funds to raise Blues’ profile in China.

None of this is likely to register a great deal with your average Blues diehard currently preoccupied with the club’s fight to stay in the Premier League.

But it sort of underlines Mr Keys’ point about football and madness, even though he wasn’t talking about Birmingham City.

Foreign ownership has been a fact of life in the English Premier League for some years now, from the geeky Glazers piling on the debt at Old Trafford to Indians booting out “Big” Sam Allardyce at Blackburn.

This merely reflects the way of the world.

After all, the Chinese own the MG car factory at Longbridge, Indians own Jaguar Land Rover, American processed cheese experts own Cadbury.

No doubt mysogynistic employees occasionally crop up in the car industry and confectionery groups sometimes get rid of managers.

But football is played out in the public eye far more than the often secretive world of multi-national business.

 Just ask Richard Keys and Andy Gray.....