The dismal story of modern football can be summed up in two words: Manchester City

These days my personal hierarchy of revulsion is determined by how morally bankrupt a club’s owners are, rather than more traditional factors such as local rivalries or whether or not Lee Bowyer was playing for them

THE NORM: Manchester City's Ilkay Gundogan lifts the Emirates FA Cup. Pic: Nick Potts/PA Wire.

On Saturday, October 11, 1975, my dad took me to my first ever football match: Aston Villa (hooray!) against Tottenham Hotspur (boo!). I would be lying if I were to claim that I could remember much of the game now. I was so captivated by the spectacle, and particularly the unimaginable noise of 50,000 people shouting vaguely in unison, that I spent much of the time looking anywhere but the pitch.

That day marked the start of a ritual for the two of us that would endure until I left home at 18. Every other Saturday Dad would drive us to the ground from our home in Nottingham, with the radio tuned to Birmingham’s commercial station, BRMB, which always had a more partisan, Villa-centric take on sports reporting than the BBC.