Blue Moon Rising

It’s been 41 years since Manchester City last won the FA Cup and 34 years since they topped any kind of prominent league. But now, following a huge injection of cash in 2008 by the club’s new owner, Abu Dhabi’s Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the team’s been able to splash out on a number of star players – including Emmanuel Adebayor and Carlos Tévez – in the hope of landing the number one spot in the Premier League. One suspects a little of the Sheikh’s finances also went into the making of this reverential documentary, but let’s not digress.

Putting aside one’s concerns about the commercialisation of sport and, more importantly, how easily a struggling football team can be elevated from the bottom of the pile to the top tier simply through an injection of vast amounts of dosh, Stewart Sugg’s film actually turns out to be well structured, competently edited, often very tense and strangely entertaining.

What the film illustrates best is the notion of what it means to be a football fan. It’s difficult for unbelievers like myself to grasp what drives the average supporter to heights of such emotional intensity but Sugg makes a fair fist of getting beneath the skin. Like any ardent supporter, the characters we follow absolutely live for the game. Little else matters. Every Man City match they watch seems to put them a step closer to the cardiac unit in A&E, especially those games played against their most bitter rivals, United. Their ups and downs make for a fascinating 90 minutes of viewing. Unless, of course, you’re a fan of Man U, Spurs, Chelsea, Arsenal…