Book Excerpts

Week 6

Strange times in Manchester. By strange, we mean ‘hilarious for everybody else’. On Saturday, both teams contrived to lose in distinct but disappointing fashion. City, for their part, decided to go for low comedy, Joe Hart conceding the winner by charging off his line in the manner of an inadequate goalkeeper attempting to assert his way out of a slump in form, and failing. United, by contrast, decided to embrace bleak, noirish horror, seemingly bamboozled by West Bromwich Albion’s ability to pass the ball at pace to one another.

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And what could be worse for any citizen of Manchester than to wake up the day after an irritating and/or humiliating loss with nothing to cling to but the knowledge of your own fading and irrelevant mortality? That’s right: waking up the day after an irritating and/or humiliating loss with nothing to cling to but the knowledge of your own fading and irrelevant mortality, and the Tory party conference coming to town.

(Which do you reckon Cameron prefers? On the one hand, City are a PFI project writ large, as well as the wet dream of every little boy that went to sleep at night and dreamed of wielding immense financial power thanks to their breeding and the exploitation of those poorer than them. But on the other, United’s hyper-capitalist owners are turning a much-loved community asset to mulch, and might offer him a game in midfield. It’s a tricky one.)

In Sunderland, meanwhile, the watching public were treated to yet another episode of Ellis Short’s investigations into the New Manager Bounce. Observers were hopeful at first, as the stripey Wearsiders, recently liberated from the yolk of fascism, buzzed around with energy, purpose, and commitment for the first quarter of the game. Sebastian Larsson hit the bar. Liverpool’s defenders were looking nervous and skittish. And then ... and then Daniel Sturridge elbowed the ball into the net and everything went to pieces. A second-half rally fell short, and it turns out that Sturridge is quite good at passing to Luis Suárez. So, who’s next? What’s Leswyn Reed up to? Is Stewart Houston dead? Was he ever alive?

Their opponents, Liverpool, persisted with the 3-5-2 formation that managed to secure them a narrow defeat against David Moyes’s apology of a parody of a Manchester United side mid-week. It’s not working particularly well in any footballing sense, and it’s making Steven Gerrard look his age, but that’s not the point. The point is this. Brendan Rodgers is a manager. And Brendan Rodgers wants you to know that he’s managing. Managing hard. And soaking the half-time oranges in brandy, apparently.

Finally, a word on Arsenal. Cauliflower.