I finished this the other day. It's by no means a hatchet job but it is either lazy or wilfully negligent in places.
David Conn seems a decent enough bloke but he is far too idealistic in some of his assesments. For example claiming kinship for the FCUM founders to the suffragette movement (and, I think, the Todpuddle martyrs too, if I remember rightly) does him no favours. That he can so unthinkingly laud and lionise one group of football club owners (all supporter owned clubs are just super and always behave awfully decently, apparently) whilst tarring another (private investors in football) as consistently on the look-out for a fast buck and nothing more (although he does speak well of City's current owners) is a bit too adolescent for my taste. Surely, a trained solicitor such as David Conn is capable of much more rounded argument?
He plays the old journalistic trick of a la carte referencing too. For example, City in the Community gets one fleeting reference early on; yet when he needs to reference football working in the community, later in the book, he cites the example of Reading FC's community work - a strange choice of club, given the book's core subject. You can get arguably away with such a-la carte-ism when you're writing an article that is confined to a limited number of words but in a book, it often leaves the author open to those aforementioned accusations of laziness and wilfull neglect.
Strange inaccuracies abound - as others have mentioned, the "free stadium" and the supposed parading of the '99 play-off trophy are true howlers; whilst no self-respecting proof-reader should have missed that Wayne Rooney was quoted as having returned to Utd for a £180k-a-week in one chapter but for £200k in another. Combined with the anomalies mentioned above, it makes one wonder if the author wasn't forced into rushing a final draft out, to coincide with the wave of publicity surrounding City last May.
All in all, a frustrating book. Yet it does actually have a great deal to recommend it. The writing style is very easy to engage with and most of the core sentiments (the mismanagement of inner cities and how it affects sport, the alienation of the young working classes from the football etc) - although sometimes, laid on a bit thick - are certainly deserving of wider debate.
There's definitely a good book in between those covers that's trying to get out. It's just a shame that somewhere between the author, editor and publisher, somebody didn't have the wherewithall to make a stand and say, 'this needs re-working!'.
David Conn seems a decent enough bloke but he is far too idealistic in some of his assesments. For example claiming kinship for the FCUM founders to the suffragette movement (and, I think, the Todpuddle martyrs too, if I remember rightly) does him no favours. That he can so unthinkingly laud and lionise one group of football club owners (all supporter owned clubs are just super and always behave awfully decently, apparently) whilst tarring another (private investors in football) as consistently on the look-out for a fast buck and nothing more (although he does speak well of City's current owners) is a bit too adolescent for my taste. Surely, a trained solicitor such as David Conn is capable of much more rounded argument?
He plays the old journalistic trick of a la carte referencing too. For example, City in the Community gets one fleeting reference early on; yet when he needs to reference football working in the community, later in the book, he cites the example of Reading FC's community work - a strange choice of club, given the book's core subject. You can get arguably away with such a-la carte-ism when you're writing an article that is confined to a limited number of words but in a book, it often leaves the author open to those aforementioned accusations of laziness and wilfull neglect.
Strange inaccuracies abound - as others have mentioned, the "free stadium" and the supposed parading of the '99 play-off trophy are true howlers; whilst no self-respecting proof-reader should have missed that Wayne Rooney was quoted as having returned to Utd for a £180k-a-week in one chapter but for £200k in another. Combined with the anomalies mentioned above, it makes one wonder if the author wasn't forced into rushing a final draft out, to coincide with the wave of publicity surrounding City last May.
All in all, a frustrating book. Yet it does actually have a great deal to recommend it. The writing style is very easy to engage with and most of the core sentiments (the mismanagement of inner cities and how it affects sport, the alienation of the young working classes from the football etc) - although sometimes, laid on a bit thick - are certainly deserving of wider debate.
There's definitely a good book in between those covers that's trying to get out. It's just a shame that somewhere between the author, editor and publisher, somebody didn't have the wherewithall to make a stand and say, 'this needs re-working!'.