Txiki Swine

You know things aren’t all good when I’m piping up.

The season’s far from over, we’re two  points off 2^nd still in two cup competitions and although I cannot see us winning the title, we have come from 8 points behind with 6 games to go (have I mentioned that before?) to win the title against seasoned winners in Ferguson’s United.

However, there’s a lot that I’m frustrated with at City at the moment, and perhaps taking a pasting off Everton is the straw that broke the camels back.

We’ll get on to the main contributor in good time (guess who that might be). A few other issues:

Going to The Etihad. I tweeted soon after the Burnley game that it’s been some time since I last looked forward to going to the stadium and that apart from the Arsenal and Barcelona home games, there’s not been much positive about going to that place. It’s becoming somewhere I go between exiting and entering the door of one of the establishments on Oldham Street. Maybe it’s an age thing, but I remember loving being in the ground around 2011. Admittedly that could be with looking back with rose tinted specs on too. The atmosphere just isn’t the same anymore, and I don’t mean “the noise we create”, I think after the initial rush of the football being back faded after a few games, people are just going through the motions for being at the game. I do it, you do it. Maybe the rush went, but coincidentally this was at a time where the standard of football started going to rat shit.

The football is very smart between the two centre halves and goalkeeper, but I’d struggle to think of many times where we’ve dragged their team out of position by playing pass the parcel in our area and then hit the opposition on the counter attack to create a goal scoring opportunity. Aguero looks like the only player in the squad capable of scoring more than 15 goals a season. Only three years ago we had 4 players who scored more than this, and if Jovetic hadn’t been injured for large portions of the season then I’m sure he would have scored a lot more.

There’s loads of issues all over the pitch though. Full backs – 3 out of the 4 have been at the club for 6 years and the lot of them are over 30. Reliance on Kompany being fit (here’s a clue – he isn’t ever fit). Stones and Otamendi incapable of playing together. Aguero and Fernandinho discipline – 5 bans between 2 players, Fernandinho having been sent off 3 times in his last 6 games in all comps. No one else can play like Fernandinho either. I love Toure but it says a lot that we’ve had to turn to him, when most fans claimed that we had out grown him. Silva and de Bruyne can look incredible at times, ineffectual other times. Sterling shows glimpses of being a world beater but he doesn’t do the things he’s good at enough i.e. tough game away at Hull with 10 men behind the ball. He runs at a defender to create space and his skill and pace wins us a penalty – this skill and pace could be the difference every week. With that in mind, Sane needs to have a proper run in the team. Kelechi gone backwards. Doesn’t seem to want to trust in Nolito.

We spent close to £30m on a Brazilian wonderkid who apparently can’t get all his documents sorted – only at City.

And then there’s the fucking goal keeper. Take away the view that Joe Hart’s never coming back, and take away the view that Bravo plays the way our manager wants. We have let Charles Joseph Hart, City and England’s number 1 leave the club and replace him by a guy who poses no threat to the opposition at corners, someone who doesn’t seem to be any quicker at shifting the ball with his hands than Hart did, and more important than anything CANNOT STOP THE BALL FROM GOING IN THE NET. I’m not one of these who lays into Stones as he’s a footballer playing in defence, however, your goalkeeper should be winning you points. I don’t want to kick Bravo when he’s down, and he’s certainly not being helped by the attacking players who are not taking their opportunities, but the guy is just not suited to playing in the Premier League. He brings a nervousness to an on-edge centre half pairing and you never see the guy screaming out instructions, which would be helpful for a team devoid of organisation and leadership. You know, all the attributes of Joe Hart.

I’ve said before that Joe Hart isn’t exactly my cup of tea off the pitch before; when I’m drinking Guinness in The Temple putting something of Revolver on the jukebox, he’s having Jagerbomb’s in Tiger Tiger jumping round to Calvin Harris. But that doesn’t stop him from being a legend of Manchester City. If there was a Mount Rushmore of City players in this current era, the most successful era of the clubs history there’s no doubt that his face would be on it. At the beginning of the summer 2016 I said there were only 3 players for me which were untouchable this summer: de Bruyne, Aguero and Hart. Since Pellegrini dropped him in Autumn 2013 he came back and became the most consistent performer for the club for over 2 years. Yeah Aguero scored a lot of goals and de Bruyne had a great first season, but Hart for a substantial period of time became our most consistent performer. Fuck me, anyone reading this will know exactly what I mean when you think about that Barcelona away game.

So we shift him on to Torino. Torino? Yeah, Torino.

And did you know that Samir Nasri, you know the guy who helped us win two titles and had the knack of scoring some of the more important goals for City, was allowed to go on loan to Seville for a year with a £16m buy clause.

At work a few months ago we had a coffee machine come back from a customer. A really great coffee solution for an office, which, brand new including installation would set you back somewhere between £6-6,500. On our books, a 2^nd hand machine registers as about £1,300 as a cost price. Now, I’m not the greatest salesperson in the world, but I sold that machine for £3,600. I was happy that I got £2,300 profit on the machine, and this guy was buzzing that he got a machine not new for almost half the price.

Why am I telling you about sales and my job in particular? Because I’m telling you right now, Txiki Begiristain would have sold that machine for £1,500. I would love to see Txiki do my job for a month and to see how far off his target he’d be. I don’t do any buying, but I realise what the value is in an asset. If I tried to sell that machine for less than £2k then as far as I’m concerned I’d be telling that customer that what you are trying to purchase is a load of shit and it’s used so much that it’s barely above scrapping all together.

I don’t know how everything works at City but as a guess, Txiki looks at the amortisation of a player regarding FFP and looks at what we price we could do it at. Now you look at Chelsea. They’ve sold Oscar for £52m, I realise that Oscar has 4 years on Nasri but as far as ability goes, is Oscar over three times the player Nasri is? Of course not. But the difference is they value their players. Safe to say that the day that Mangala is no longer associated with the club the media and fans from all over the world will piss their sides at the frighteningly bad scouting that went into discovering him and the ridiculous discrepancy between the money we spent on him and the amount he will be leaving the club for. Tell you what, I remember watching City hammer Porto at home in 2012 with David Pizzarro in midfield and they had Otamendi, Mangala and Fernando in their team that day. I’ll leave you to think about that for a minute.

I remember writing once about the “ghosts” of certain players. The ghosts of Joleon Lescott, Gareth Barry, Nigel de Jong, Carlos Tevez, Mario Balotelli, Edin Dzeko and dare I even say it Adam Johnson hang over this current crop and are forever growing as they would all chip in with match winning performances, goals or generally be that difference between winning titles and struggling to get in the top 4, like we are right now. None of these players have been sufficiently replaced. Only Fernandinho and Kevin de Bruyne can be referred to as success’ since the day we signed Aguero in July 2011. That’s almost 6 years. I’m hoping in 3 years I’ll be adding Sane, Sterling, Jesus and Stones to this list as well as many others, but why should I believe in a director of football who has so little to show since he walked through the door?

Txiki has overseen this clusterfuck. I’m getting bored of mentioning Martin Tyler speculating about how the happenings of 13^th May 2012 could be the start of a dynasty.

His defence will always be fire fighting the FFP issues laid before him by Garry Cook, and he got Pep to manage the club. People will probably let him get away with it all due to these reasons, after all, David Cameron got in again by finger pointing the previous regime for any problems, and some people are so besotted with Guardiola that he could call Kinkladze an overrated fat Russian and no one would blink an eye.

No doubt if we win the Champions League and Guardiola super kicks Mourinho in the FA Cup final just after Gabriel Jesus scores an overhead kick then all of the above will be irrelevant. But I’m more sure in 10 months time we’ll be back to where we are now. Potless, squandered loads of money on unproven players, Joe Hart captaining Liverpool and kept 7 clean sheets in 9 games and Bravo playing upfront.

Points

"I see you've still got that blog slagging Pellegrini off as your pinned tweet" says a friend of mine in Glasgow hours before our Champions League tie against Celtic. As he points out that I haven't said anything relevant for 6 months, many supporters are stood outside in the cold and wet queuing up trying to get their tickets for that evenings match.

Fortunately for me, the coach I got up to Glasgow landed outside the Old Fruitmarket at about 12, just before another few coaches and trains rocked up to the city to get our tickets for the match. I queued for about 15 minutes in total and within about 30 minutes of parking up on the coach I was sipping a pint of Guinness. I was lucky compared to a lot of City fans. I was unlucky in Madrid back in May when a large chunk of our travelling allocation turned up at the same time for the same reason - but as frustrating as it was to waste an hour or so out of a bar, at least the weather was alright.

These measures that the club have put in place for the picking up of away tickets for a European fixture started earlier in the competition. The first time I came across it was in Paris, which I thought was down to the fact that Paris is a bit bait at the time, only months after the terrorist attacks. But obviously not. This afternoon the club have posted the reasons why these measures were put into place:

• Supporter feedback that the current ticket sales process does not work and access to tickets is becoming more difficult
• Supporters that qualify are buying tickets with no intention of attending the respective match and selling them on
• Inappropriate behaviour of a small number of supporters when at the away ground

The first two points are kind of interlinked so I'll have a look at the third point first. I'm unsure what they're referring to here. I think the club are being really unspecific because it's a given within football club support that, "there's always a few trouble makers" or words to that effect. There isn't anything that stands out in my mind which has increased the the 5/6 years of continued appearances by City in Europe and as far as I'm aware there is not an increase in bans to our supporters. (I could be well off the mark here as I rarely visit the scaremongerfest of football forum's anymore.) Putting a system in place where people have to queue up for an hour in a hotel 5 hours before kick off will not effect supporters from acting like Brits abroad. There will be people heading out to Barcelona next week looking forward to drinking excessively and generally acting up - I'm not condoning it, but how on earth is picking up tickets as opposed to receiving them in the post going to change a persons behaviour? If you want to go abroad and act like a dick because of St. George or whatever then you're going to do that ticket in bag or ticket in hotel lobby.

So to the first two bullet points. As it stands the format for obtaining away tickets are the following:

• You have a customer number which is linked to your membership with the club.
• On this customer number you have points which are gained by buying tickets to football matches.
• When tickets go on sale for a new game, the criteria is broken down by those with x amount of points being able to purchase a ticket on a particular day. e.g. Supporters with 10,000 points can buy a ticket on Monday, supporters with 9,000 points can buy a ticket on Tuesday, supporters with 8,000 points can buy a ticket on Wednesday and so on.

Quite straight forward, really.

Before I go into detail about the negatives of the system, the biggest negative of all is these points being called "Loyalty Points". What is loyalty? How do you define loyalty? Is one guy more loyal to the club than someone else because he can afford to go more? Is Liam Wright of 2010 more loyal than Liam Wright of 2016 more loyal because I've gone from living 160 miles away from the ground to 1.6 miles away from the ground? And what's worse, the club introduced a £50 charge to double your points per game a.k.a. Platinum Membership. 

The club's golden period has come at a time where a lot of people are hard up, to the people at the top of the club £50 is loose change, but to a lot of people £50 is a lot of money which you can't just part with. People have families to feed. A season ticket at a football club is expensive enough considering coming bottom of the Premier League means the club are given more money than I could possibly comprehend. Where does that extra £50 go? It certainly doesn't keep out City's latest official Asian tyre sponsor from getting a handful of tickets at Anfield. That extra £50 gives you the piece of mind that some poor sod has to go to double the amount of games you do to creep ahead of you in the points system. 

Where the loyalty points system falls down is the following:

An away allocation of, lets say 3,000, will not be solely sold through this system. 

Why? 

Corporate tickets i.e. freebies players get and sponsors get a slice. How big this slice is is unknown but for anyone who has stood in the corner of The Emirates or Stamford Bridge will know that these 'types' seem to be everywhere. 

Supporters Clubs. I have run a supporters club before and unless things have changed in the past two years there was nothing in place to say that I had to give the tickets we were given as a branch to supporters over a certain number of points. i.e. my branch were given 10 tickets for Liverpool away and the points sold out at 10,000, I could distribute these tickets to people 10 people who didn't even have a season ticket, just a "Blue Membership" because they were members of the supporters branch. Again, I would only be guessing the % of the allocation which is given out this way.

The second point on the clubs statement is an issue. The "points whores" as we call them, live amongst us. People have bought tickets with no intention of going to the game. I don't think anyone is completely innocent when it comes to this, though. "Liam, are you going to West Ham away? I'm desperate for a ticket as I'm meeting up with my mate from uni and I'm going to a party in London that night, I don't have enough points for a ticket but can I use yours if you're not going?" - this is an example of a message I might receive off someone. If I'm not going to the match I can't really say to him "Sorry mate, but I think you should respect City's loyalty points system" - I'm doing my mate a favour, the points don't really come into it. I'm not whoring myself out for the points, but I'm letting someone queue jump.

The points system has been in place for approx 15 years. So if you went all the time between 2004-2009 that is just as relevant as going from 2011 onwards. Now you could argue this either way here - if you went all the time when Musampa was the man then that could make you seem more 'deserving' than going in days of David Silva. But, so what if you went all the time under Keegan? You've basically fucked it off for a decade. 

Another issue is the younger fans. I was chatting to a mate in Glasgow who had gone up to the match on the chance he could pick up a ticket. I see this lad everywhere but he's in his early twenties and had to get a ticket on other peoples membership for years. This is something which has been an issue. A lot of my best mates don't want to take risks on tickets for certain games going down to their points when two of our mates who used to go all the time but now have other priorities have higher points. Lad who has gone to 50-70% of away games for the past 8 seasons will use someones ticket who went to 90% for 4 seasons but now doesn't bother with it. Your Dad's mate who's got 17,000 points is moving to Majorca but keeping his season ticket, you're free to use his ticket for away games - do you use the easy way and beef up his points or do you concentrate on the 8,590 you've got?

From my point of view, despite their being flaws, I'm all for keeping the system as it is. This will sound very selfish, but it is what it is. Watching City away and being in different towns and cities with my mates is not a chore, but I have put a lot of work into getting into the position I'm in. For every 6-1 at Old Trafford there's been a 2-0 loss at Portsmouth, 1-0 loss at Charlton, going to West Ham, Moscow, Chelsea and Newcastle in the space of 10 days. Enjoyed all these days, but there's reasons why some of us at the top of the pile don't want to surrender our position. I know I'm not alone in fearing the alternatives like Chelsea's points system restarting at the start of every season, or United's dreaded ballot. If anyone from the club reads this; please do not do a ballot. The club is struggling enough at losing it's fan identity without you making it worse.

I believe a rolling 10 year format would be more beneficial for younger fans and for fans who may only now be able to afford to go to our former working class passion. The club have the information at their finger tips and to be honest, why should going to Reading for a 1-0 loss on a Monday night in September 2006 bare anything on whether I get a ticket for West Brom in a few weeks? For the points whores; it's going to be hard to eradicate them, especially with the new £30 away ticket rule, but would a ballot or a fresh points system stop that? Most away tickets go on sale 4 weeks before the match, out of 20 people that buy it a month in advance 1 is more than likely to either get the curly finger treatment from their partner, get too pissed the night before the match or something else unforeseen come up. 

For those that want to get up the chain; don't buy your ticket off someone else. Use your own points. You won't get a ticket for everything, but more often than not away games do go down a lot to achievable points. You've just got to do a few Swansea and Crystal Palace's away before you can get Liverpool or United away. That's the way that anyone with a lot of points has had to do it.

An ending fitting for the start

11th May 2013. It seems like a very long time ago now, but on that morning City fans woke up to the news that regardless of whether we won that days F.A. Cup final we would be dismissing our manager Roberto Mancini. It was two days off the first anniversary of Mancini and City's greatest triumph, and possibly the most iconic moment in English football. 

Like most, I loved and still think the world about Roberto Mancini. He picked up a squad which was struggling under Mark Hughes and gave them organisation. We may have missed out on some initial goals in his first season, but the board gave him time to continue building. The summer of 2010 should always be remembered as one of the greatest as far as acquisitions go. Ask most City fans and it would be a toss up between Yaya Toure and David Silva as to who their favourite ever player is, and we bought both of them in the summer window. Add to them players like James Milner, Aleksander Kolarov, Mario Balotelli and you've got a decent chunk of the make up of those that delivered us our first trophies in 35 years. 

But it wasn't just about winning things which made Mancini our man, and it was certainly a lot more than simply wearing a City scarf on the sidelines, although that was a good first step to at least getting on the fans side. It was the way he spoke, the way he acted and his whole passion and ambition for the club. The way that he punched the air when we scored that last minute winner against Villarreal, the way which he gave it to Ferguson on the touchline, and the way that although in the moments of madness on a sunny mid May afternoon in 2012 he didn't accept the thanks or congratulations from the press' questions, he first and foremost said "this is for all of our supporters".

Back to 2013 and things had turned a bit grey. Mancini was still strongly backed by the majority of our supporters and there was a big feeling that the new guys at board level were not giving him the backing he deserved, despite offering him a five year contract. The summer following the title win Mancini made it clear that he wanted Van Persie and De Rossi but instead we got Scott Sinclair and Maicon. Public spats with Balotelli was bad for the clubs PR. And unfortunately as much as you do not want to admit it, we are a public face of our owners and we must be seen to be a success but also approachable. Lots of rumours about players turning against Mancini also came out, and the much publicized view of kitman Les Chapman that he wouldn't even say 'hello' when he came in.

The word was that Mancini was going to be sacked and replaced with Manuel Pellegrini. I honestly had no idea who the guy was. I'm incredibly ignorant of continental football, and I don't have Sky/watch Match of the Day - Danny Drinkwater could be in the room with me right now and I wouldn't know who he is. So when I found out he was the Malaga manager I, and I'm sure a lot of others were underwhelmed. If we're getting rid of our manager that we love then it should be for someone that is clearly a lot more qualified. 

I was stood outside my entrance at Wembley before the Wigan game and there was confusion, frustration and anger in the air. The Mancini song rung out outside and inside the ground, and "you can stick your Pellegrini up your arse". We all know how the rest of the day went, Ben Watson scored, we left the ground and it pissed it down. The next day Mancini was sacked.

Why am I writing about Mancini if this is a blog about Pellegrini? Because it is really important to the context of his story. I'm not for one minute suggesting that people were against Pellegrini from day one because of Mancini, however it's hard to argue that with a lot of fans the ghost of Roberto has been over Manuel, in the same way that the ghosts of de Jong and Barry will continue to circle over the heads of the players that have allowed the Etihad go from fortress to just another place where you'll probably score if you have a go. 

Fast forward to 8th May 2016 and the sun may have been shining in east Manchester but the air was full of desperate emotions. Despite one of our best performances of the season, we couldn't see off Arsenal. Similarly how we performed well against Tottenham but ended up on the losing side back in February. This isn't about the Arsenal game, the damage has been done elsewhere in the season, but this day was for the majority of match going fans the last time to see some players and the manager in the flesh. The final whistle blew and the apathy shown to the players and staff from the supporters was just as strong as any chant screamed in passion outside Wembley in 2013.

On May 13th 2012 Martin Tyler said a few sound bites which are imprinted on a City fans memory, but the ones which still ring in my ear are "is this the start of a dynasty?" and "is winning things the new 'Typical City'?" We should have been at the start of a period of domination seconds after Aguero fired the ball past Paddy Kenny, but instead we're sat here clinging at the threads of Champions League football with only one more title to our cabinet plus a couple of League Cups. How has this happened? 

We are all aware where we came from; I'm not going to go on about the "remember York away" aspect of our support as it's been done to death. We should be expecting a lot more than what we've achieved.

Is our current situation solely down to Pellegrini? Of course not. Financial Fair Play restrictions have hindered City somewhat, but that doesn't excuse how the money which was available has been spent. The aforementioned summer in 2012 was a sign of City standing still. The summer of 2014 again was City standing still. But £40 million on Mangala; he's recently had a handful of decent games but surely that money could have been spent better? Possibly an understatement there.

The summer just gone was the first time in years where we've bought players who have clearly been identified as first team starters, not just squad players but we have gone backwards. To be honest when you look at the squad on paper it still reads as a very strong squad apart from one area in particular - up front. Which bright spark had the idea that we should enter the season with 3 strikers? And when you look at those three strikers you have one which is without doubt one of the greatest in the world, however is constantly on the verge of injury. Then you have an untried 19 year old who has turned out to be one of the few success stories of the year. And then there's Bony. People boo'd Bony when he came on yesterday, which was a very disappointing thing to hear. I do not rate him one bit, I hope he doesn't play for City again but to boo him? Nah. It's not his fault that he's playing in the wrong team, and who wouldn't have wanted to join City from Swansea?

Back to Pellegrini. 

His first season was overall a success. He came through a dodgy start to go on one of the best runs City have ever been on. The winter of 2013/14 was one of the best City have ever played and every week we looked to smash teams off the pitch. The squad was rotated well and Manuel got the best out of Kolarov, Nasri and Dzeko whilst Negredo seemed to be a great signing, this coincided with Yaya having the best season of his career. 

After a rocky patch, we became strong again as the season finished and we won the Premier League. We broke records and at times were incredible, however there were a fair few moments where you wondered what game Pellers was watching. Wigan at home in the F.A. Cup and the two big Champions League games vs Bayern and Barca at home made him look naive.

The 2014/15 season wasn't the worst, but there were some pretty grim moments. Losing to Newcastle at home in the League Cup and Middlesbrough in the F.A. Cup too stick out in my mind. The Arsenal game at the end of January was bad. I think for a lot of people the biggest turning point with the fans and Pellegrini came away at Burnley. We lost and looked utterly toothless and out of ideas. The 4-4-2 system had been sussed out and he wasn't learning. Add this to walking straight past the away end and not acknowledging the fans at all. We don't ask for much in the way of recognition, just a wave or a clap for 10 seconds at the end of the game is good enough. Suppose when you're a multimillionaire you can't really relate to people have to put off other areas of their life to try and scrape together that £50 away ticket.

One thing that we rarely had between 2010-2014 was taking an absolute pasting. United at Old Trafford was the first time in years where we looked like we were going to concede every time they went forward. In past 13 months these occasions have happened time and time again. Spurs away, Liverpool home and away, Leicester at home, Southampton away, Stoke away. 20 goals conceded in those 6 games. I remember writing in December 2009 that Hughes didn't sort out the defensive unit from conceding 4 away at United in September til he eventually got sacked in December during a week where we conceded 9 goals in 3 games. 

Hughes got sacked for less, Mancini certainly got sacked for a lot less. Although I can see why they were sacked - the sacking of Hughes for Mancini was completely justified. Because of Pellegrini's nice guy attitude and basically knowing he's been a caretaker manager since day 1 he's been allowed to overstay his welcome by over a year and having banners held up at the ground for his farewell speech.

Now I don't dislike Pellegrini. I follow people on Twitter who say some ridiculous things about him like they want him to die etc. which is probably the best way of showing how the internet has allowed people to showcase their psychological issues. Similar to his press conferences, to his passion towards the fans, I have no real emotion towards him. I don't wish anything bad on him, if anything I wish him well in the future. As I've said in the past, he's just out of his depth as a top level football manager. He wasn't trying to make the team lose. And you're a bit of a mental if you think otherwise. 

The way in which the board has allowed him to be in charge of the club for this period of time just to set up everything for Pep screams of putting all your eggs in a basket. Pep might turn out to win us everything over the next few years, and that is what we're all hoping for. But the club see us as customers, and they've treated their customers without a lot of respect over the past year.  I know this is a really short term way of looking at it, but we could have brought someone (anyone) in in November and probably saved this season. Look at what Real Madrid have done. They could potentially win the La Liga and Champions League because they got rid of someone who wasn't up to the task and despite him being one of the greatest players in the history of football, he had zero managerial experience.

Of course, there is excitement surrounding change. We're getting a much better manager with a fantastic CV and one that will hopefully create a bond with the supporters.

The first era of Mansour is ending. As well as the manager, some of the key players of our recent history and the badge of 19 years are to become part of the past. But maybe that's something to talk about another time.

It is fitting for Pellegrini's time to end in the similar shambles in which he took the job 3 years ago. 

Roll on August...

The State Of Things

It takes me quite a bit these days to get so incensed or passionate by something to want to write about it. Sorry if this comes across as incoherent rambling, but if I say everything that's been pissing me off today then maybe I'll feel better, and for reading all this you might feel worse (which secretly makes me feel even better).

From the outside it might seem easy to point to one single issue at the moment as to why I'm letting my fingers let out a lot of rage, but the fact is that there are many issues and I think these past few days have been the tipping point. 

Where to start? How about the stuff on the pitch?

This rant is not just about yesterday. Yesterday was shit, and it's never nice to get beaten by United but I've seen us lose to United plenty of times before. Having said that, I've never seen a poorer United team and as one of my mate's said, there's been plenty of times in the last few years where you've seen them play and thought 'De Gea is keeping them in this', but they could have had either Andy Goram's in goal and and it wouldn't have made any difference.

Yesterday was typical of the season we've had so far. We've not turned up at all against any of the clubs doing well this season and we've looked the complete opposite of how we started this season and ended last season. Yeah sure there have been injuries to key players, something which Arsenal and United have both had to deal with. But gone is the reliability of a lot of players. Aguero won the player of the year award last year because of being the league's top scorer, but I think it's hard to argue that since his dip in form in the Autumn of 2013, Joe Hart has been our most consistent and reliable performer. Especially in the big games. 

When we won the title in 2012 we had a first 16 that were reliable and relatively fresh. Since then we've given Kompany more centre half pairings than calf injuries, we've played Silva and Yaya constantly without a sufficient break and we've gone from Tevez to Bony. 

A question I asked a fair few times last night before I sloped off home was; do we overrate our players? Ask many and they'll tell you that Fernandinho has been the best player in the team this season. And although I'm not disagreeing with that as such, is he really the best in the league in his position? Sagna too has had a great season after few and far between performances last year, but when Zabaleta has been fit we've looked a lot more dangerous attacking wise.

And the players we don't rate; Otamendi, Mangala, Fernando for example - are they really as bad as we think? These three have been the long term replacements for Kolo Toure, Lescott and Barry/de Jong (arguably Garcia, who was sold as soon as he looked half decent). Since we won the title in 2014 I can only think of a handful of great performances from the team and individuals. And what does that tell you?

The manager. 

Now I still feel uncomfortable and maybe a bit ashamed that I see so many people saying some really bad things about Manuel. I know people scoff at "well Chappy thinks he's a nice guy" or whatever, but the fact is he's just a football manager who is massively out of his depth and out of ideas. That shouldn't mean that you hate the guy or wish death upon him. It's not like he's the bloke in La Rosa takeaway on Great Ancoats Street who takes the chips out too early despite me telling him every fucking time that I like my chips crispy. No but seriously, no one cannot deny that Pellegrini has massively over stayed his welcome and he should resign/be sacked but I couldn't bring myself to hate him. This club has only ever won the league 4 times and he was there during one of these times, no matter how much you could now argue that we won it in spite of him.

He's lost it. Properly. I think the turning point for a lot of people including myself was Burnley away last season. But I gave him a second chance as we ended the season well and got off to a flyer. I was stood in the away end at Stoke a few months ago luckily only 2-0 and the combination of the cold air, my hangover and the Brittania playing "You're my Waterloo" by The Libertines at half time made it hit me once again. What are we doing with this guy? He's not got us organised and we seem to be absolutely shitting it every time the opposition go forward and there's not enough creativity when attacking.

I can't really think of ever feeling this way about a manager of City. I backed Pearce and Hughes right til the end. But this guy has been a caretaker manager for three years. No City player has improved in the time he has been here. Pep has got a proper job on his hands next year. And if you think there's any correlation between the announcement of the new manager and our form then you're wrong. We've been shite for 18 months, take away about 10 games.

Is he solely to blame? Of course not. Fair thing to say that some of the investment into the team hasn't been the best, with the aforementioned poorer players looking like huge amounts of money squandered - but is that down to the manager's coaching? The decision to sell Negredo, Dzeko and Jovetic within a calender year and only replace them with Bony is staggering when you think about it. We actually paid more for Bonehead than any of the three other strikers that fired us to the title 2 years ago. The club from the top seem to view this season getting through to the quarter finals of the Champions League as a great success. Semi's will be a good achievement, no doubt, but it doesn't stop the fact that despite some bad luck in groups and draws we've hugely under performed in Europe.

Which brings me on to the 2nd half of this rant. Ticket prices.

I've written before about City and the Champions League and how we didn't really "get" it. Well whether I get it now or not I want to win it as it's the only thing left for us this season. One of the issues I touched on was the empty seats at games. City not selling out home games is topic of much joy for people throughout the social media wank world. I see people I know who support other clubs mocking ours or other teams support. "Haha look at Stoke, they only took 1,300 to X" Barold McMongathon likes this post and also comments on it saying "shit club, shit fans". I can't even be arsed going in to these twattish shenanigans. 

This time last year I was working in Trafford Park and I had to drive past Old Trafford every day. I turned right off Chester Road and used to drive past a school. You're in a proper red area here and anyone who went to that school is well in their rights to support United. But I can only imagine how many of these kids will ever get to go to a live game watching their club. Not many I would think until they were over 18. 

This is happening all over the country. A sport which has it's traditions in working class areas of England is no longer affordable. This isn't new news. It's been like this for years. But it has been getting worse. 

But then there's a reason to celebrate. The Premier League has enforced a cap on away tickets to £30. Great news. Especially for someone like me without the greatest income who goes to at least 15 away games per season. You're seeing it everywhere now as well that clubs are either freezing season ticket prices or making reductions. The penny must have finally dropped at all the clubs.

Silence from City. The richest club in the world, no longer bound by FFP restrictions, famous for having to give away tickets for some games, are staying silent.

They have a great opportunity to show us what we can expect from next years prices by publishing the Champions League quarter final prices. And they don't only drop a bollock, they kick you in the bollocks first. We can't be expecting it to be £10 to get in for such a big game, and yeah I have paid £60 to watch us play at Stamford Bridge and The Emirates more than once in the past few years, but £40 being the cheapest adult ticket for a game which might not mean anything is so out of touch with the fanbase. 

Better wordsmiths than me have already written articles about how City should remember that Manchester is one of the most deprived areas of the country and that's bang on. There's a lot of people a lot worse off out there than myself as far as income goes but I'm getting to the point now where I can't really justify it. City do so much in so many areas of the club but they've done nothing for years to try and maintain the culture and traditions of City fans. What does an emotional video of Kinkladze and Colin Bell to dramatic music before kick off mean when the stadium is full of people who don't even know where Claremont Road is?

City have not let us down on replacing this current clown with a much greater manager. They cannot let us down by squeezing us harder financially before August rolls round. 

If you've lost your faith in love and music

Anyone reading this that knows me knows that I have had two major passions in my life; football and music. For 10 months a year I have a plan for every weekend. I know what I'm doing. I know how much money I can spend during the week and as you despairingly clock watch throughout the early stages of the week, you know you have something to look forward to. I saw plenty of people comment in April saying that they just wanted the season to be over for the year, and "roll on August", feelings which I've probably said myself over the years. But the truth is, life is quite hard to adjust to when you haven't got football around in the summer. It's quite a hard feeling to describe, almost like having months of driving through a tunnel, but getting out of it and suddenly you haven't got a roof on your car either. That probably makes no sense, but it's how it feels to me.

People who don't really do football might find it hard to understand. After all, there is round the clock reports and updates about the most insignificant matters to do with football. And the summer months brings to social media and forums the worst sorts of people in the world - the transfer speculation pervs. I can't claim to not get a little bit excited at the potential signings, but it's more the impatience of people when these signings aren't done straight away which annoys me. Fast food culture, instant gratification society etc. you know what I mean. Also, the constant use of the word "fraud" to the point that I think it's lost all meaning now.

So without football, I rely on music to give me something to look forward to in the summer months. I went to quite a lot of good out door gigs last summer, but there's not been as many announced this year by the bands that I like. A few weeks ago I noticed that The Libertines were playing a gig in Dublin, so I and a few friends booked flights to go out there and see them. I saw The Libertines last summer at their Hyde Park gig, and I'd gone to Dublin last summer for an Arctic Monkeys gig - so I knew that I'd probably enjoy the combination this time round.

I was quite late to the party with The Libertines. As said in a past blog (http://liamwright1987.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/my-generation-nu-metal-forgotten.html) I spent my teen years listening to the heavier aspect of rock music, and I wasn't interested at all in the era when they were releasing their only two albums to date. Although in that said blog I went into what appealed to me so much about that type of music, it's worth factoring in that a lot of the bands that I grew up listening to from being a young child weren't doing anything particularly great. Oasis and Blur in 2000 weren't the same band of 1995, and all the British bands that were in their place like Travis and Stereophonics never really appealed to me. I'd say the first song that brought my tastes back to British rock music after only listening to American metal for four or five years was "Cutt Off" by Kasabian. By the time I started university in 2006, I was really into the indie scene in the UK. But again, apart from a few tracks, I never really got into The Libertines for reasons I can't seem to put my finger on. Anyway, I finally got onto Up The Bracket and their self titled album a little while later and realised that they were and are the best band to come from the UK since the turn of the century. Songs which flirt between energy and beauty whilst all the time well thought out lyrics sung by two vocalists that perfectly compliment each other.

Their music is one thing of course, but it's the dynamic of the band which a lot of people find so fascinating. Pete Doherty is probably the last great rock star we've produced. Being a great rock star isn't just about writing great music and being a tortured soul, heroin addict; it's about being effortlessly cool too. Yeah, since he's stopped the smack he's put on a bit of timber and isn't looking as fresh as he was a decade a go, but he's still such a presence on stage. Earlier today I watched a 2006 interview with Pete on the Jonathan Ross show, he seemed deeply sad about how at that point nobody in the band wanted to speak to him at the time due to his drug addiction. The Libertines definitely had unfinished business and I can't imagine anyone being disappointed when they first got back together for the Reading/Leeds weekend in 2010. 

Dublin is a great place, if not a little bit expensive. When travelling around Europe watching City I try to avoid going to the Irish Bars in the different cities we go to as it's not a real experience of the place you're visiting. I think with this in my mind, I've been put off the idea of Irish Bars, however, in Dublin these are obviously just bars, and a lot better than The Jimmy McMahon Shamrock in Rome, or whatever. Good weather always helps too. We landed on the Thursday at about 10 and got some breakfast down us before getting on a full session of Guinness. I think throughout the day we probably went to about 10 bars before getting to the gig, so we had a decent walk around.

Living inside the M60 gives you a distorted opinion on the size of the band who were supporting The Libertines on Thursday; The Courteeners. Have a conversation with a 22 year old in 42's about The Courteeners and I'm sure they will tell you all about how they're the greatest band out there at the moment, that Liam Fray is a great lyricist and their gigs are the most mental experiences ever because people let flares off. Everyone is entitled to their opinion when it comes to music as it is a very personal experience, but I don't get the appeal of this band (perhaps because I never had a job as a paper boy?) and judging by the amount of people in the arena to see them when they played their set, I don't think they've taken Ireland by storm yet. I think the last chord of their first song had just finished by the time I decided it was time to go back to the bar for more refreshments before the main event.

The set The Libertines played was spot on. They played a good mixture of singles, album tracks, new songs coming from their album set to be released in September and the odd b-side. The chemistry on stage between Pete and Carl is still something that you don't get with any other band that I've seen. The variation in their song writing gives you so many different emotions too. Playing the anthemic, sing-a-longs of  "What Katie Did" and "Music When The Lights Go Out" back to back to ending their set with an incredible encore of the more punky songs, "Up The Bracket" "What A Waster" and "I Get Along" was a pure manic adrenaline rush in a mosh pit of sweat and Beamish. My personal highlight was "The Good Old Days". Leaving the gig in this euphoria made me and my friends continue to sing "I Get Along" down the street as we walked back into central Dublin. Nothing in life can quite compare to that feeling of the ball hitting the back of the net, away from home, with your mates, celebrating wildly. But what I experienced on Thursday night came close. 

It's a shame really that the state of the British music scene is that bad that we're relying on bands from a decade ago to write and release music that is relevant. As long as I've been alive we've not had a drought of talent like this for so long. But I hope that a band like The Libertines releasing this new album can get young people in this country to write exciting rock n roll again, because we are long overdue something like The Libertines. 

My Generation: Nu-Metal, the forgotten phenomenon

I've thought about this topic quite a bit over the past 18 months, and after reading Clive Martin in Vice recently talking about youth culture (or lack of it) in today's society, it made me think about my early teen years.

Before I begin, I should make it clear that I really do love British culture. It's a shame in a way that as I hit my teens there wasn't really anything going on of any note to latch on to in this country, whereas the U.S. did.

I always have and always will be into rock music. I remember being young and travelling in the passenger seat to football matches with my Dad listening to a Beatles best of tape. I remember my sister letting me listen to "Whatever" by Oasis and being blown away by it. There's probably not a lot of people my age who can say that they were at Knebworth for what was possibly the defining moment for British music post-1960's. Whilst other boys my age might have wanted a new bike I wanted to own Blur's Great Escape.

I've dabbled in other genre's throughout the years. I can't think of many people my age who were into music in their pre-teens who didn't know the majority of "2001" by Dr. Dre, and as I got older and started going out drinking at the weekends, there were plenty of upbeat dancey songs which became the wallpaper in becoming an adult. I've been to Ibiza plenty of times, I've been to EDC, I've been to Warehouse Project, I've been to Global Gathering. I still follow Deadmau5 on Twitter. But it's rock music which has always been the constant.

I can imagine when journalists from the British music press document the trends in music for young people in this country it tends to go: Stone Roses, Nirvana, Oasis, The Libertines, Arctic Monkeys. Every few years, a band's breakthrough effort would go from being nothing to all of a sudden being the biggest thing in the rock planet. Definitely Maybe signified the start of the Britpop era, as morbid as it sounds, timed to perfection after the suicide of Kurt Cobain, thus ended Grunge's time on top for the young people of Britain (despite Grunge's finest hour, Superunknown by Soundgarden being released a month before Cobain's death). Another Oasis album and death represents the end of Britpop; Be Here Now and Princess Diana. But I'm not going to bang on about this, but if you're interested and haven't seen it, I'd encourage watching this:

There's five years between Be Here Now and Up The Bracket. But no one ever seems to speak about the music which filled the void for the youth. It certainly wasn't Toploader, Savage Garden or similar radio friendly shite. We're now heading into the very late 90's and the new millennium. Around this time, more and more families were switching to Sky Digital. Only five years earlier, most families in the UK only had four channels. All of a sudden we had hundreds. There was now more options and music channels which catered for certain genres of music. Also there was more sport channels. Around this time, what was the WWF (now WWE) was experiencing a golden era. For someone like myself in my pre-teens in those days the macho, charismatic, aggressive action on display for two hours at a time was the highlight of your week. I have always enjoyed sportsmen with a bit about them, I think a lot of people do. I'd idolised footballers up until this moment. Now I had people like Steve Austin and The Rock using bad language, insulting people and providing televisual highs; highs I certainly weren't getting from watching City! Accompanying this weekly masculine soap opera was distorted guitars, heavy riffs and aggressive vocals. This, for a lot of young people in Britain was a first chance for our ears to hear metal.

The only way I had really heard of metal as a kid was Iron Maiden and thinking of old hairy men dressed up like bikers. Nu-Metal was different to real metal. There was not the emphasis on guitar solo's. You didn't have to have a ballad. It was OK not to wear leather and have long hair. You could have more than just the simple drums, bass and guitars in a song. It was fine to have a crossover of music styles and genre's. Considering the popularity of the collaborations of Run DMC/Aerosmith on, "Walk this way" and Beastie Boys/Kerry King on, "No sleep til Brooklyn" it's amazing that this hadn't happened a lot earlier. The artists knew that there was benefits to cross over. I'm sure those that liked Limp Bizkit probably gave DMX and Method Man a listen. I'm sure people who were a fan of Ice Cube wanted to hear how Korn and Chino Moreno would cover, "Wicked".

Of course Nu-Metal had already been around for a few years before it registered to us. At the same time as Definitely Maybe filled the Nirvana shape hole in the UK, Korn had been there for the kids in America releasing their self titled debut album. At my age we didn't have exposure to this style of music until MTV2 existed. The American bands of a heavier persuasion would have been covered by magazines like Kerrang! or Metal Hammer, but I, and I'm guessing a lot of others of my age had no idea of these mags. To be honest, I don't think I would have been ready for their heaviness yet. Korn were and are very successful. Their first album more than anything else they've ever done showed a Grunge influence (especially on tracks like "Predictable" and "Lies") but their bassist, Fieldy, gave them an almost funk sound amongst the heavy, downtuned guitars. It was unique, and lyrically Korn was more personal than anything Cobain had done. Jonathan Davis didn't really tip toe around subjects, as you can hear on "Daddy" or on the follow up album Life is Peachy with the song "Kill You". Nu-Metal was darker and heavier than Grunge, and clearly appealed to young people.

I see the time when Nu-Metal made itself known over in the UK as around the time between Limp Bizkit's albums Significant Other and Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavoured Water. There really was a buzz about this band, and I felt like I had already heard of them before I heard them. During the summer of 2000 the biggest blockbuster film from Hollywood was Mission Impossible 2. The two lead songs accompanying this film were Metallica's, "I Disappear" and Limp Bizkit's, "Take a look around". Hearing music like this as a 12 year old was something else. I'd heard of Metallica before, but it was more in a negative way. They were seen as an 80's band who were a spent force (which was true) and Lars Ulrich was painted as a bit of a dick for standing up to Napster. Limp Bizkit on the other hand were something that I'd never heard. It's quite hard to describe them without quoting Ben Stiller on the outro to Chocolate Starfish.

But they did take elements of metal and hip-hop which made them irresistible to people like myself and hated by everyone else. Well not everyone else. The third single released on Chocolate Starfish is probably the worst song the band ever wrote (although I've never listened to anything post-Results May Vary and I'm possibly being too kind to "Head for the barricade") but "Rollin'" made it to number 1 in the UK chart. That's right, the biggest selling song in the UK was "Rollin'" by Limp Bizkit. Within a few months, the Nu-Metal bandwagon had gone from being on the outskirts of the British musical landscape to being the top seller. I know there's been a lot of shit that's topped the chart over the years, but no songs off the aforementioned albums by Stone Roses, Nirvana, Oasis, or The Libertines (Arctics did though). Add to this, Limp Bizkit put a gig on at The Bowl in Milton Keynes. Now, it's perhaps not Knebworth, but you've got to be achieving something pretty fucking special at the time to have the balls to put on a gig at The Bowl. I can think of only the Swedish House Mafia who have released such little material that could pull this off. Whereas the Swedes played MK and was a seminal moment for the house fans of the UK, Limp Bizkit had to pull out due to Fred Durst suffering a back injury. I was gutted at the time as it was only a week or so before the gig that they cancelled.

Another band, or should I say name, which was getting a bit of exposure in the UK was Marilyn Manson. He released the album Holywood in October 2000 and although I don't think you call his music Nu-Metal, his aggressive and dark style struck a chord with me. He was painted as the anti-Christ (superstar) due to his image and because there were a lot of fingers pointed at him in the aftermath of the Columbine High School shooting, as the two murderers that day were known to listen to Manson. His music wasn't like Limp Bizkit or Korn, but his own style would have no doubt influenced some of the Nu-Metal bands who maybe didn't hit the same heights as some but produced some quality albums and songs. He made songs that were rebellious and lyrics that you just wouldn't hear at a time where Britney Spears still polluted the charts; "I'm not a slave to a God that doesn't exist." His popularity increased further when he covered "Tainted Love", to the point of where even the trackie bottom tucked into white sock crowd even knew about it.

Following the success of Limp Bizkit and the exposure this style of music was getting, other bands such as Linkin Park and Papa Roach became very big, very quick. I loved Papa Roach. Infest was a bit more riff orientated than some of the other stuff around at the time. I can even remember a time when you might hear the song "Last Resort" on a night out, when they were playing the more rockier tunes (presumably between "All the small things" and "Basket Case"). I was never really into Linkin Park when they first came out as they seemed a little soft for me, but the album Hybrid Theory is possibly the defining album of it's era. With it's radio friendly sound and massive chorus' at a time when Nu-Metal was white hot, it's not really too surprising that this album has sold 27 million. Yes, that's 5 million more than (What's The Story) Morning Glory. Linkin Park are without doubt the most successful band from this era, but their debut album was probably the only true Nu-Metal album.

These three bands had a lot of kids at my school talking. And eventually as more and more people got into this style of music, people started to dress in a certain way. Every area of the country seems to have it's own term for people who were into this type of music and who dressed in a certain way. Round mine we were known as "grebo's". I have no idea where the phrase comes from, but it basically meant that you wore baggy jeans, had a (fake) silver chain going from your back pocket to your side pocket and usually wore a black tshirt and the most important piece of clothing; a band's hoodie. Glory days.

I can remember quite clearly Ozzfest in 2001 being set in my town of Milton Keynes. Me and two of my friends walked there. We didn't get in (despite the absolute lie we told people for years - sorry) but we stood near the entrance at The Bowl and listened to the band who blew my mind. Slipknot. I can still remember the first time I listened to their first album. I had heard "Wait & Bleed" on the TV quite a lot and really liked it. At that point I thought that this was really heavy. Then I listened to the album and what I considered to be heavy was changed. It had been released in 1999, but I had only heard it in 2001, months before they released Iowa, which for me is probably in my top 10 metal albums written. They had a certain mystique about them which evaporated the second you saw any of them without their masks on. There was something very intoxicating about their lyrics and aggression to a 13 year old. They're a band I still love to listen to now, and I have a lot of time for Corey Taylor. But for me Joey Jordison was a vital part of the group and I can't really imagine seeing them live without his drumming.

Another band who I have a lot of time for that played that day at Ozzfest were Mudvayne. They eventually evolved into quite an established metal band playing more radio-friendly songs, like "Happy". But for me, their album L.D. 50 is one of the great Nu-Metal albums. Similar to hearing Slipknot for the first time, hearing the song, "Dig" was up there. I still love this song, and I even associate it with a night out I had in 2010. They had the mystique of Slipknot too, with their face paint and fake names, and they had more depth to their sound. "Nothing to Gein" for example combines a lot more styles and sounds than the other bands at the more extreme side of Nu-Metal.

After Iowa was released, another band released one of the true great Nu-Metal albums. System of a Down's Toxicity. They were very Nu-Metal, although they sounded very unique. They almost had a bit of comical side to their songs too, which can be heard on the song "Bounce". Their previous self titled album was released two years earlier, and I think I'd maybe heard "Spiders" once or twice on MTV2, and although that song is great, it's not really a demonstration of the band. Toxicity produced three really popular singles; "Chop Suey", "Aerials" and "Toxicity". "Chop Suey" will forever be getting a great response on metal dancefloors with it's heavy verse and melodic sing-a-long chorus. Toxicity was the first album I can really recall listening to which had quite a political content. The opening track, "Prison Song" commented on issues I'd never even considered. I sorta went off S.O.A.D. because of the music being overly directed at George Bush in the coming years, which is something Green Day definitely cashed in on. I'll talk about politics now with anyone as an adult, but at 15 I weren't interested, and I'm not surprised that a load of politicians are nonces, as the lads who I went to school with who studied it were definitely the types. Either way, Toxicity was a great album.

I associate this album a lot with joining a new school and unfortunately it was released around the time of the September 11th attacks. Funnily enough, there's another song which reminds me of this time, "Shinobi vs Dragon Ninja" by Lost Prophets. I probably could write a bit about them, but Watkins being a sick bastard slightly puts me off giving them any credit. This brings me on to British bands which were successful in this era. They weren't. For some reason, we couldn't pull it off. Bands like Feeder, A, Hell is for Heroes and Hundred Reasons were packaged in HMV to be Nu-Metal, but they didn't have the edge or attitude compared to the Americans.

As always, due to the popularity of the genre the market gets over-flooded with a lot of average/dross bands that take the shine off a genre. Probably the last great Nu-Metal album released in it's era was The War of Art by American Head Charge. They had the weird sounds, possibly influenced by Manson, but overall had a very heavy sound combined with some magical melodic choruses. I saw them at Ozzfest 2002 and they were brilliant, one of the best sets I've seen. I can still see myself at school listening to "Song for the Suspect" and being blown away by it.

The Nu-Metal genre has a similarity to Britpop; as previously mentioned the band that started it with a great album ended the genre with somewhat of a let down (I say that although I fucking love Be Here Now and refute the claim that all the songs are too long). Korn released Untouchables and although "Here to Stay" was a great song, the album generally was pretty weak. Actually, some of the songs on it are absolute garbage. I'd quite happily never listen to "Hollow Life", "Alone I Break", "Beat it Upright" and "Wake Up Hate" ever again. The album was ridiculously hyped and they spent a lot of money on the production of it, so I guess we were expecting something really good and it didn't deliver.

The bands that had done alright out of Nu-Metal continued to do so albeit with an altered sound/image, whereas the industry were bored of the sound and what became popular was either a softer sound or a harder sound. Bands like Brand New, Taking Back Sunday, Funeral For A Friend, HIM got bigger after Nu-Metal ended, whereas people like myself who craved something heavier went for bands like Killswitch Engage, Chimaira, Lamb of God and Shadows Fall.

There is one band I've omitted from mentioning yet, and it's a case of saving the best til last. The one band who have time and after time released quality albums from the Nu-Metal era to the current day with constantly evolving whilst keeping a sound which is absolutely them is Deftones. Arguably the greatest Nu-Metal album is Around The Fur, released in 1997. This album is everything about that time and is a perfect representation of what Nu-Metal is all about. Similarly the follow up album White Pony is also one of the great Nu-Metal albums, "Passenger" in particular, featuring Tool's Maynard James Keenan, and "Change (In the House of Flies)" are both classic songs of the era.

They changed their sound as time went on, but occasionally released something which harked back to Nu-Metal, like "Mein" off Saturday Night Wrist. The album Diamond Eyes was so refreshing when it was released as it showed that there was still some great music being released by bands that I grew up listening to after Korn and Slipknot had released albums which could be called their weakest (Untouchables aside).

I saw Deftones play in Birmingham last February and they were excellent. Their last album Koi No Yokan is the last metal album I bought, and could probably find itself in my top albums I own. They're probably the only band of the era that I loved so much that I will rush out to purchase their latest offer. I usually buy Slipknot's album as soon as it comes out, but over a month later and I've still not got round to buying The Grey Chapter, although what I have heard of it sounds good.

The speed in which the Slipknot/Korn tour in early 2015 sold out is an indication that the era has a legacy, but one which rarely gets spoken of outside the world of metal, but it is still an important genre in the history of youth culture.

A few other Nu-Metal classics:

City and the Champions League

I've had a few brief looks across social media since Tuesday, and the none-footballing side of Manchester City seems to have been spoken about quite a lot over the past 48 hours by lots of different sets of supporters.

At around lunchtime on Wednesday I saw a tweet from Jamie Jackson, or it could have been Mark Ogden, one of the usual journalists which cannot hide their loyalties. One of the replies to this tweet which eluded to the -8,000 in the ground on Tuesday night was, "they have dreamt about this and now they can't be bothered." It got me thinking about City's relationship with the Champions League and possibly, football all together from a City fans perspective. I'm not claiming to be the voice of the fans, but this is just the way I see it...

"They have dreamt about this..."

Do you know what? I don't ever really recall "dreaming" of playing in the Champions League when growing up. I have been going to City since 1994 and had a season ticket since 1999. City weren't even in the Premier League in a lot of the time in these years, let alone in contention to qualify for the Champions League. Maybe it's my own ignorance to football outside of City which I keep to this day, but I can't really remember the Champions League being as big a thing when I was younger. I remember watching United win it, but to me, Sky didn't ram it down my throat until about 2003-04. Maybe that's because round then English football was beginning to be back at the top of the European game. Over the next few seasons we saw many huge battles between Chelsea and Liverpool and of course the latters famous night in Istanbul, Arsenal got to the final in Paris a year later, and over the next five seasons United only failed to make at least the semi's once, getting to the final three times, then the following year Chelsea won it.

But back to City. For so much of my life, Champions League football wasn't ever even a thought. There was no way we'd ever qualify, unless some billionaire pumped a load of money into of course, but how unlikely is that? The City around the time of the takeover in 2008 can be compared a lot to the club that Sunderland are today. Big ground, good fanbase, terribly mismanaged, millions squandered on journeymen, and go through managers and false dawns like you wouldn't believe. Also, after a few years of being a yo-yo club, they have had a good run of years in the top division. I'm sure if you asked a lot of Mackems, "what do you dream of?" the answer will be something a long the lines of, "six points against them bastards and a cup win." Because that's exactly how it was for me. As a Mancunian being brought up in a pathetic southern town full of them, I was, to misquote my favourite new Vine, "bantered off for 19 years with shithousery", which therefore entitles me to be a bitter blue. Growing up, I just wanted to be better than United and if we could win a cup then that would be incredible. The Champions League was never a thought.

Even when the takeover happened and we bought Robinho, I still didn't really think about the Champions League. I can remember Alan Green on 5Live chuckling at the thought of Manchester City in the Champions League. The knowing we had to be in it, and the wanting to qualify for it came around Spring 2010. I was really gutted when Tottenham beat us to 4th place that year. A year later, when we beat Tottenham to qualify for it, I was delighted and relieved in equal measure. You shouldn't take the jibes to heart, but looking back it would have been nothing short of a disgrace if that team in 2010/11 didn't get in the top four. I've had debates with people in the years that have passed that we could have won the league that year, but probably lacked self belief.

Getting away from my feelings on the Champions League in the years before we qualified for it, I think people/camelfaced dickheads need to remember a few things before they start preaching about empty seats. As previously said, I got my season ticket in 1999. It wasn't until 2006 that City got to the quarter finals of a cup competition. So for many years, you had your 38 league games, and without exaggerating, you probably had 4 cup games at most. 5 if we scraped a draw away at Villa (cheers Micah). All in all, about 42-44 games a season. And this was when City were category C for most clubs and football all round was a lot cheaper. Compare all this to how many games a season we have now, and how many times we're the category A game. Was over 50 last season, and probably will be the same going forward. I know people moan about it a lot, and I tend to keep quiet on the subject because I go to virtually every game every season regardless, but it really is shocking. At home to Sheffield Wednesday last week, I went in without having my tea and had a hot dog and chips. £6.50. Robbing bastards. And for me, one of the saddest things on this subject is when people deem the £43 that x are charging a fair price. I remember being horrified in 2006 when Wigan charged us £35. I can hear fans of other teams saying, "you're paying for the price of success" and perhaps we are, but the amount it's changed to be a regular at City is obviously going to have an effect on our fanbase. City are very fair on kids prices, and quite good on 18-21's. But there's a lot of blokes I've met over the years who are the same age as me, and they just don't go anymore, because it's too much money, and for someone who used to have a season ticket and go to 6 or 7 aways a season, they're now looking at two or three, as with everything else, travel and beer has gone up too.

I used to love the days when I was a kid and my Dad would take me to an away game, they're probably the best and most clear memories I have of my childhood. If (God forbid) I ever have children, I'd like to be able to ruin their lives, too. But by then, how much will it cost to watch your club? Probably best not thinking about it.

I have a lot of time for Garry Cook, but his idea to categorise each stand at City was nothing short of a blunder. The North Stand becoming a crèche was a mistake as far as atmosphere goes, and you always see empty seats there. The North Stand was fine as it was, but moving people who had been there since the move from Maine Road, and those that had sat with the same people in the Platt Lane was just not on, really. I'm not sure if it's still the same rules, but I'm pretty sure the there needs to be an under 16 within a group of 6 adults to sit in the North Stand. No wonder why we see empty seats there.

And of course, there's the constant discussion on the atmosphere. No one really knows the answer to this. I have attended meetings at City before discussing this topic. The club tried moving the away fans but didn't advertise the blocks which are usually taken by the away fans for people who want to sing. For me, the issue is the stadium itself. The noise doesn't travel well, and it would be a lot better if the tiers one and two were just one. There's times where the ground does get going, but it's not really enough.

I think it's fair to say that the group games are a bit of a damp squib anyway. The knockouts give a whole different edge to the game, and I'm sure if we had played Roma in the last 16 then we would have had a completely different experience to Tuesday night. We've got one point from two games, but there's nothing to say that we can't be going out to Rome in December with ten points and needing only a draw to take us through to the last 16.

Bit of a controversial one, but I also think the songs we sing must play a part too. Hear me out. Not the songs for individual players, because they're fine. But songs about the club. Blue Moon is a great terrace anthem, but I'd suggest it's strength is that it sounds great as being defiant when there's despair on the pitch. A lot of our songs are. "We never win at home and we never win away" for example, is a great song, and it's part of our culture. But our culture for so many of all our supporters life has been the ability to laugh at ourselves, to show that we're loyal to our club despite what's going on. We haven't got much beyond "Come on City" which you feel raises the expectation from the stands and has an effect on the players. You can tell I've spent a lot of time thinking to myself in a van this week, can't you?

I'm hoping that with time I and many others start to get and enjoy the Champions League. I've seen what winning it has meant to my mates who support other teams. But right now, it's just another cup competition which we seem to be shite at. Like the good old days.