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This chapter analyses urban economic transformation through fieldwork among a group of football fans, who in 2005 formed a breakaway club ‘FC United of Manchester’ in response to a transnational debt-leveraged buy-out of Manchester United Football Club. Notions of locality and community had become increasingly politicised amongst these fans in recent decades. With Manchester United’s ability to trade in many different markets and with a fan-base across the country and internationally, it was perceived that Manchester United no longer necessarily needed a relationship with its local fan-base. In response, these fans increasingly articulated a moral claim about Manchester United’s responsibility to its local ‘community’ which the analysis relates to anthropological theories of gifts and commodities. This analysis contextualises the subsequent formation of FC United and its enduring reciprocal obligations to its ‘community’.

This chapter explores the first defining moment in Mancunian football, the 1904 FA Cup success, and its impact on the city’s footballing culture, considering how Manchester’s footballing identity became established during this period. Manchester City established a successful sporting heritage for the city at a time when those connected with Newton Heath recognised the significance of utilising the Manchester name. The identity of Manchester’s football clubs became fixed at this time as Newton Heath became Manchester United. Success helped to establish civic pride and marked a turning point in the way the game was viewed locally and, as a result, Manchester started the process of becoming established as a major centre for the game at all levels. Manchester became a footballing city.

This chapter considers the 1915 match-fixing scandal between Manchester United and Liverpool and its impact on the perception of the game and its leading players. It considers the long-range impact of that scandal on the structure of league football. The significance of the match-fixing scandal and player-related issues is that a simple episode, such as the increase in membership of the Football League, is merely one event within a sequence of events at the episodal level and that, as in this case, analysis of each League meeting and an interrogation of evidence reveals a broader series of episodes. In the case of the League’s expansion, this was a transformational cycle containing a series of episodes such as the Liverpool–Manchester United game and the various meetings along the way.

This introductory chapter discusses the debates existing within the academic community on football’s origins, class issues and the role of football within a developing city such as Manchester. Manchester provides a unique opportunity to study the development of football within a conurbation. whose rapid growth and influx of cultures, ideas and skills, including sporting interests, helped football to become woven into the cultural fabric of Greater Manchester. The successes of Manchester United and Manchester City have given global exposure to the city and associated it with footballing glory. Association football has become central to Mancunian life and the sport has established perceptions of Manchester, its image and power on a global scale. Using a longue durée framework this work analyses Manchester’s footballing activity through to 1919, by which time the city was regarded as a footballing conurbation. The themes, cycles and events highlighted provide evidence of the game’s transition within a major conurbation. The chapter also explains the research methodology employed, which has been influenced by the work of historian Fernand Braudel.

This chapter investigates the idea the football fandom is an expression of the carnivalesque and a transgression from everyday norms. It provides a discussion of how the theory of carnival as the ‘world turned upside down’ (deriving from Bakhtin's work), fits with the reality of the match-going experience for fans. It also discusses the theory that it performs a cathartic nature. The chapter concludes that for a sub-culture of fans the analogy of football as carnival is a helpful tool for explaining motivations and behaviour. It also looks at where the carnival was physically and socially ‘located’ at the three clubs under research – Blackpool FC, Manchester United and the England national team.