It’s a Friday evening during the football season , but here in the Northwest, from where two teams will shortly compete for the most famous knockout trophy in the world, things now seem very muted. What’s it like in the Northeast, where two teams have a really serious weekend coming up?
It’s an FA cup final weekend but not a proper one. How can it be? The league hasn’t finished. There will be Premiership games on the Sunday. The final itself kicks off at 5.15 on Saturday, to suit God knows who, presumably not the thousands of fans who will struggle to get back to Greater Manchester. Money, money, money, it’s a rich man’s world and bugger the poor supporters, as ABBA could have written.
Of course, it’s not just the timing of the final and the continuance of the Premier league. The Press and TV in the Northwest this week has been full of one manager’s resignation and another’s appointment, not long after covering a Merseyside derby which included a legendary player’s almost last appearance. It’s only now that the TV down here has turned to Wigan and Man City, and it feels quite exhausted in doing so, as if football has been done to death, which maybe it has.