a tale of one city

So it’s come down to this: barring some kind of 100-1 miracle of biblical proportions (a draw or loss at QPR), Manchester City will be crowned champions of England for the first time since 1968. Or put another way, a business that over the last five years has outlaid nearly triple what its nearest financial rival can stump up will see the results of all that hard work with a final day triumph most likely decided on goal difference.

The facts are that City’s net spend for the last five years is £418.9m, dwarfing Chelsea’s £155.9m, Liverpool’s £83.3m and Tottenham’s £66.7m. Bringing up the middle are the titans of Sunderland with £69.2m, Aston Villa on £68.4m and Stoke on £59.7m, while current champions Man United limp in at a lowly eighth with £51.6m. When a club with the largest revenues in world football is being out-spent on player resources by Stoke(!) something surely must be rotten in the state of Mancunia. Not all foreign ownerships would appear to be equal – what United wouldn’t give to be owned by an oil rich Emirati rather than some shady pilfering Yanks.

Tell that to City fans tonight though and chances are they wouldn’t give a sheikh.

adam yauch 1964-2012

In tribute to Adam Yauch, AKA MCA I offer my heartfelt post from September last year – the Beasties were truly ground-breakers and he will be sorely missed. RIP.

So, 2011 marks the 20th anniversary of Nirvana breaking punk in America does it? Never mind indeed that it was 14 years after another ground-breaking album, coincidentally also with Never in the title – what was the rush? At that rate, we can expect a US Britpop movement along any day now. While it’s tempting and more fun to say no one outside the UK ever really cared for punk, that’s ignoring the fact the US had already truly gotten it when Beastie Boys’ Licensed To Ill topped the charts a mere 10 years after the Pistols did the same in the UK. It sounded like three teenagers repeatedly reversing a stolen car over their parents’ record collection while screeching atonally over the top about stuff like drinking, guns and girls, and if that wasn’t punk, I don’t know what is. Had Ad Rock only taken the trouble to kill himself like a proper punk star, the thread would be complete. On the down side, the fledgling hip-rock movement also ushered in the era of grown men wearing XXXL sports gear that persists to this day, but we can’t really blame it entirely for that eyesore.

pep no longer in step?

“Mourinho earned the respect of his players, and also that of the sartorial misfits of the media, not by shouting loudest, but through virtue of his taste. Whereas former coaching greats might have been able to show their cups and medals to the squad, Mourinho clearly possessed the experience that players now prized most: he knew how to shop.”

“Eh? Football managers and style?!” I hear you cry. Trust the Europeans to do it better than anyone, particularly when all the Premier League has to offer is Fergie, David Moyes or Kenny Dalglish, AKA The Anfield Tramp. Admittedly there are the odd exceptions to the rule (Newcastle’s Alan Pardew cuts a reasonable jib and even Mark Hughes looks at last to have found a jacket that can contain him), but generally the Brits are left in the dust by the triple strikeforce of Mancini, di Matteo and Martinez. Even that soberest of Frenchmen Arsene Wenger generally gets it right, despite sporting the same hairstyle for his entire 62 years. In any case, despite a rough week UK Esquire makes a claim for soon-to-be ex-Barcelona manager Pep Guardiola being the current king of the style crop with Jose nipping at his bespoke heels. Who knows, maybe Pep’s about to go where even David Beckham fears to tread – menswear design?

the price of everything, the value of nothing

If there’s one thing we’ve learnt about billionaires recently it’s because they’re rich they know absolutely everything about everything. That, and they like to get their own way. How else to explain Roman Abramovich, Clive Palmer and Nathan Tinkler’s antics of late? Rich man buys football club: it’s nothing new certainly, but the last few years have seen an explosion of “blue sky thinking” that suggests buying a sporting team and running it yourself is the most brilliant idea anybody’s had since the invention of money. And if you’re super-rich, what better lark can there be than your own personal fiefdom represented by 11 almost-as-rich-but-not-quite underlings? In case you missed it, Chelsea are currently looking for their eighth manager in nine years, while Gold Coast have been booted out of the A League only for Clive to retort that he’s starting his own football league and possibly plans to try and disrupt this weekend’s A League grand final with some sort of aerial protest, which may or may not involve blocking out the sun. All this after making a 17 year old team captain then sacking the manager, before finally suggesting FFA boss Frank Lowy was the one who belonged in an institution. As for Newcastle’s Nathan Tinkler, he found that returning his $5 million owner’s licence in a fit of pique wasn’t as easy as making sure you hung on to your receipt. What I don’t understand is why these guys even bother to hire a manager – just cut to the chase, take training and select the team yourself. Come on Roman, football and oil wells ain’t so different are they? And Clive and Nathan – you guys dig stuff out of the ground and flog it to the Chinese, so how hard can running a successful football team be? And while you’re at it, why not start your own football association and run it from your underground lair? Oh that’s right Clive, you are!

Enjoy the grand final guys. Football will still be here when you’re long gone.

known and unknown pleasures

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If Ian Curtis had the chance to hang himself all over again the amount of useless tat associated with Joy Division and their classic 1979 release Unknown Pleasures would surely inspire a quick trip to the hardware store for a fresh length of clothesline. Whether it’s an iPhone case, yet more assorted ugly trainers from the usual suspects at Nike, Vans and New Balance or possibly the worst yet, the Disney-endorsed Mickey Mouse t shirt, there seems to be no limit to the amount of pointless junk cranked out with the iconic pulsar CP 1919 image plastered all over it. Whether the three surviving members endorse or are even aware of what’s being done with their history is unclear (you probably wouldn’t put it past Peter Hook), though the fact that designer Peter Saville originally appropriated the image himself from the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Astronomy may mean they have little recourse. The point is, some things were never meant to be cross-referenced, updated, remixed or used to sell bloody trainers and Disneyland – they just are; leave them be.

Next: The “Love Will Tear Us Apart” condom.

gq’s guide to calling the kettle black

The internet is indeed a strange and terrible place, full of ranting nutjobs and social misfits vying for airspace, and that’s just Twitter. Fashion blogs can be even worse, with the American menswear versions that hold most sway seemingly run by style experts who, if their liberal use of hip hop lingo is anything to go by, grew up in the toughest ghettoes of the US but are now living the dream, bro. Presumably so successful via full-time street-wear blogging, they possess every essential expensive item of clothing known, or better yet, unknown to man or boy before it hits any store you’ve never even heard of. In Naples. They also go to all “the shows” or at least know someone who maybe did once. In reality, they’re probably spotty teenagers living in their mother’s basement who read one too many Dos and Don’ts in primary school and now own a digital camera. In any case, the mighty Satorialist will no doubt be blamed, and while also deftly avoiding responsibility for their proliferation, this piece from US GQ nails it pretty well, telling you how to find or avoid them.

And just for the record, my bike has gears – seven of ‘em.

how to be a man (part 2)

I recently spent three hours on a Saturday afternoon making tiny bow ties out of a broken rubber band. Over and over again in four fluid moves, until I had that mini rubber bow in the palm of my hand. While certainly not what I ought to have been doing, it wasted quite a lot of time and gave me pause to ponder several things, two of which being: “how the hell did it come to this?” and, “is this the kind of skill that would make it onto one of those ‘How To Be A Man’ lists?” Choosing to ignore the first question, I decided that while knowing how to tie a bow tie is a fine addition to any modern man’s set of skills, it hardly constitutes essential manly information anymore. “What does?” I hear you cry. Well, since you ask…(with apologies to Glenn O’Brien who literally wrote the book on how to be a man. Actually, make that actually wrote the book.)

A man should be able to:

design, grow and maintain his own facial hair
design, grow and maintain his own nose, ear and back hair
wash, iron and fold own his clothes
buy his own clothes
drive a manual dune buggy
change a tyre on a dune buggy
clutch start said buggy/kick start a motor trike
start a small camp fire
put out a larger brush fire
reheat an edible meal from leftovers
see at least two of his toes while standing
catch a ball without giggling
defend a friend, unless already talking to a woman
sew a wound with only scotch for anesthetic
remove his own impacted wisdom tooth
fight a bull

Ok, admittedly I might’ve borrowed those last few from Hemingway, but you get the gist. And if you can also tie your own bow tie, as I’m sure he could, so much the better.

one too many off the wrist

I was recently collared and asked my opinion on the current male predilection for adorning one’s wrists with endless multiple bangles, bracelets and other bits of wristraff, apparently known as “mewellery”. Four, five, six or seven of these bits of leather, wood or metal on either hand are not at all uncommon, and in combination with a watch, a practicing meweller may well end up looking like a fugitive from a Turkish bazaar, a Bali layabout, or even worse, a gypsy. Why do supposedly well-dressed men (mainly on the internet it has to be said) insist on drawing attention to the ends of their scrawny arms with enough paraphanalia to make Axl Rose cry “enough already”? Are neck tattoos just not cutting it anymore? Is rap and the word “bling” to blame again? And more importantly, why does the media resort to adding an “m” to the beginning of words (“mankles”, “moobs” and “manscaping” to name but three) they’re attempting to lazily masculinise? British GQ doesn’t have any of the answers, but pointedly suggests that Don Draper and James Bond would keep their accessories to a minimum and so should you.

sooks in the city

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Images of puffy-faced fat blokes crying into their overstuffed nylon replica shirts – is it Newcastle’s infamous 1996 choke all over again? To be fair to the Geordies, they do tend to start bawling at the drop of a hat, and living in Newcastle they certainly have more reason than most to sob into their Newky Brown, but surely this Man City fan is jumping the gun a tad after the weekend’s 1-0 loss to Swansea? After all, it is only March and they trail by a solitary point with some ten matches to play – or do they know something we don’t? Anyway, in this piece, the aforementioned cry-baby explains how he wasn’t crying at all and it was just something in his eye. Like a tear, but not, apparently.

not so simple minded

Unfortunately many people only know Simple Minds as the bastard Scottish cousins of U2, all pointless noise and empty anthems with Jim Kerr bellowing about saving the Belfast Children and other such Live Aid-sized nonsense. Having said that, “Don’t You Forget About Me” was a pretty slick attempt at prising open the previously disinterested US market that obviously got both parties slightly tipsy. But there was a time not long before when they were so much more – the rightful heirs to original art-rockers Roxy Music in fact, right down to their own Avalon-like peak in 1982’s luminous New Gold Dream. They seem to have finally arrived at the same conclusion after years of denial, and are about to tour their first five recently remastered albums with five songs from each every night. Thequietus.com features a great piece on them here. Unfortunately, in common with Magazine (the other Greatest Ever Post-Punk Band who did a similar thing last year), the fact their hugely important original bass player is not on board lets the air out of the tyres a little, but still, it’s a start.