I've finally got round to reading Colin Shindler's "Manchester City Ruined My Life". Yes, I know it's a '90s classic of the intellectualisation of the football fan, and I've read other Shindler books, but for some reason never his first.
Anyway, while I'm enjoying it, I can't help but admitting that the most fascinating thing I'm finding with it is wondering whether this fan who grew up with Trautmann and came of age in the Summerbee-Bell-Young-Lee era still holds such a depth of feeling for Man City under the Al-Mubaraks.
Notwithstanding the irony that the new regime probably isn't especially Jewish-friendly (although I've nothing to suggest the Abu Dhabi royals are particularly anti-Zionist), it must be a strange concept for the long-standing Citeh fan to go from being widely warmly regarded by the general football supporting populace for their devotion to a long-running joke - albeit while still getting the same sort of jibes as all Newcastle and Leeds supporters that their claims to unusual loyalty while in the doldrums don't really stand up to any great scrutiny - to being adherents of a rather depressing splurge of unearned wealth on some of the greediest and most despicable of the generally unprepossessing current generation of footballers.
I'm a Spurs fan and I accept that our present relative success has been made possible in part by the backing of Joe Lewis' money. But I don't feel that this investment has changed the ethos or overall feel of the club. But the transformation of Manchester City, for example, or Blackburn or Chelsea is clear. My query is whether, as a fan, you start to care less. Whether more money and more scumbags on the playing staff makes you less engaged, less raw when the results go against you and, in particular, less exultant in the good times.
For the sake of the honest, long-suffering fans of clubs like Man City, I hope not. But I can't help suspecting that it might.
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