Book description
Colin Shindler has previously written of his deep love for Manchester
City in the bestselling Manchester United Ruined My Life and three other
previous books. Now he tells the story of his sorrowful disenchantment
with his home town club as, on the instruction of its new foreign
owners, it turns itself remorselessly into a global brand. Trophyless
since 1976, in 2011 Manchester City won the FA Cup and set off on their
quest for the Premiership and the Champions League. In their zeal to win
every competition the new Manchester City has spent money with wild
abandon, signing outstandingly talented players as well as a few
ordinary ones but in almost every case at hugely inflated prices. From
the nail-biting win over Gillingham in the League Two Play Off final at
Wembley in 1999 to the climax of the 2011 season, Shindler watches his
team get steadily more successful and, to his own bewilderment, feels
steadily more alienated from it. This is the story of a frustrated
romantic who finds in the glitz and glamour of the current
media-obsessed game a helter-skelter of artificially fabricated
excitement. As he details how football courses through his veins
Shindler tells how it intersects with his own life, a life that has been
marked by family tragedy, and how he finally found personal redemption
even as his team lost its soul. 'This could still be the most
important football book since Fever Pitch capturing, as it does, the
delicious irony that caused City fans to fall into a soon to be
legendary chorus of "Are you watching Macclesfield?"' Colin
Shindler was born and raised in Manchester, educated at Bury Grammar
School and Gonville & Caius College Cambridge, and has worked as a
writer and a producer in film, television and radio. He has written two
novels and presented history programmes on radio and television. In
addition to the books and articles he has written on sport and British
and American social and cultural history, he also lectures on film and
history at Cambridge University. In recent years he has never been
happier than when he saw Lancashire win the County Championship in 2011.
