Brian Viner: City's fantasy football success leaves their veteran supporters with empty dreams

The Last Word

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On Tuesday evening, while Manchester City were beating Tottenham Hotspur to clinch their place in next season's Champions League, I was at home in Herefordshire having dinner with Colin Shindler, who some years ago drew on his deep devotion to City to write the best-selling Manchester United Ruined My Life.

At the end of the main course, Colin expressed vague interest in how City were getting on. So we trooped from the kitchen through to the living room and switched on the Sky Sports coverage. City were leading 1-0. We watched for 10 seconds and then Colin declared himself satisfied. We went back for pudding. Does anything about this story strike you as a little odd?

Surely, it is that Colin Shindler, a man practically defined by his love for Manchester City and commensurate disdain for United, should be only vaguely interested in his team's progress to the Champions League. Even odder is that he has no ticket for today's FA Cup final. He could have got hold of one, but didn't bother trying. Colin is one of those City fans, most of them over 50, who have been left feeling disorientated and alienated by the club's oil-fired propulsion into the financial stratosphere.

Like them, he was not overjoyed when City gained the right, as the cliché-mongers have it, to dine at the top table of European football. In fact, he was more interested in dining at my kitchen table. Why? Because he deplores the fact that the club were manifestly keener to finish fourth or possibly third in the Premier League than they are to win the Cup this afternoon. "Playing Champions League group matches on cold November nights against AEK Athens," he said glumly. "Is that what it's all about? Opening up a new tranche of money despite already being richer than everybody else?" City, he feels, best exemplify the modern footballing version of Oscar Wilde's old aphorism, knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing. But they are not alone. "Did John W Henry buy Liverpool because he used to admire Ron Yeats? No, it's because he wants a share of the rights to show Premier League football in China. Did Sheikh Mansour grow up with a picture of Mike Summerbee on his bedroom wall? No, he found a vehicle, available at the right time. It's not about Manchester, it's about Abu Dhabi. And there will be a price to pay."

Colin conceded that these might be dismissed as the ramblings of a misty-eyed old fart. "I remember when we won the league in 1968, and there were men droning on about the Championship-winning side of 1937. I wanted to say, 'But look at what's in front of you, it's fabulous'. The difference now is that Joe Mercer and Malcolm Allison grew that team, whereas this is like playing fantasy football. This City team has been cooked in a microwave; very tasty, but if you really want something sumptuous you have to cook it for three hours in red wine, in the oven."

Food for thought, even if most of the City fans marching happily on Wembley today would disagree vehemently. At least they can still rely on Shindler for one emotion. In 1968, 17 days after the Blues won the league, the Reds won the European Cup. Today, whether or not the Blues win the FA Cup, the Reds will probably steal their thunder again, wrapping up their 19th league title. Fans of his book will doubtless be gratified to know that Manchester United continue to ruin Colin Shindler's life, but saddened to learn that, in a way, they have now been joined by Manchester City.

Why losers come first in O'Sullevan's commentaries

They say that age is just a number, but 93 is still a pretty big number, which made the performance of Sir Peter O'Sullevan on Thursday evening all the more astonishing. I was interviewing him in front of a packed audience at the Rankin Club in Leominster, Herefordshire, and not once in almost three hours did his memory, or his wit, fail him even slightly. When someone in the audience asked who his favourite modern horseracing commentators were, he reeled off a few names and then, ever courteous, asked the chap who his own favourites were. "Mike Cattermole," the man said, "probably because he called the only winner I've ever had." The audience laughed, but Sir Peter, for once, looked serious. "Ah, that's the thing, you see. What you have to remember is that usually you're relaying bad news to people. And they hold you partly accountable." Which may well be so, yet the 14,500 races he called yielded him nothing but friends and admirers.

Cup final memories money can't buy

The marvellous and unashamedly nostalgic Back Pass magazine, produced in a back room close to where I live in the Welsh Marches, celebrates today's FA Cup final with some splendid interviews with old Manchester City players, conducted by my Independent colleague Phil Shaw. Here's Fred Eyre, who never quite made it to the first team. "I was released by Les McDowall, a manager we never saw, who made Howard Hughes look like Bruce Forsyth." And Roy Cheetham, on being asked whether he wouldn't rather be playing now, coining it. "What, and miss out on playing against Bobby Charlton, Dennis Viollet, Johnny Haynes, Stan Matthews, Tom Finney, Ivor Allchurch, Jimmy McIlroy and the great Jimmy Greaves? I wouldn't give that up for any money." Cracking stuff.