Manchester derby the biggest in Europe

Europe's biggest derbies by combined average attendance 

1	Manchester United	75,387	Manchester City	47,044	122,431	4
2	Real Madrid	74,836	Atletico Madrid	45,236	120,072	4
3	FC Barcelona	78,340	RCD Espanyol	26,826	105,166	3.3
4	Milan	51,442	Internazionale	47,913	99,355	0
5	Celtic	50,904	Rangers	46,324	97,288	4
6	Arsenal	60,000	Tottenham Hotspur	36,026	96,026	3.8
7	Bayern Munich	69,000	TSV Munchen 1860	22,898	91,898	0
8	Liverpool	44,253	Everton	33,228	77,481	0.6
9	Benfica	42,464	Sporting CP	34,490	76,954	1.4
10	Hamburg SV	53,465	St. Pauli	23,220	76,685	3.6
11	Real Betis	37,405	Seville	35,684	73,089	2
12	Roma	35,240	Lazio	32,444	67,687	0
13	Chelsea	41,478	Fulham	25,293	66,771	1.4
14	Aston Villa	33,873	West Brom	24,793	58,666	3.3
15	VfB Stuttgart	55,090	Stuttgarter Kickers	3,561	58,651	3.3
16	Juventus	37,545	Torino	15,897	53,442	4.7
17	Feyenoord	44,605	Sparta Rotterdam	7,089	51,694	4.2

The table above shows Europe's biggest derbies based on combined average attendances throughout the 2011-2012 season (i.e. not just for the derby matches themselves but for all matches). I've defined a derby as a match between two teams whose stadiums are within 5 miles of each other. With a combined average attendance of 69,573 the derby between Hertha Berlin and Union Berlin would have made the list but the clubs' stadiums are 14.4 miles apart. I would be very interested to know if there are other derbies which people think would make the list based on these criteria. The stadiums of Borussia Dortmund and Schalke are 17 miles apart but their combined average attendance of 141,739 would make it the biggest derby in Europe. Newcastle United and Sunderland have a combined average attendance of 89,030 but their stadiums are 10 miles apart.

Neville, Giggs and Scholes: United's Modern Trinity

Manchester United use the language of divine mystery to celebrate the partnership of George Best, Denis Law and Bobby Charlton, who helped propel the club to European Cup success in 1968, ten years after the Munich Air Disaster. They each won the Ballon d'Or (Law in 1964, Charlton in 1966 and Best in 1968) and are the core part of a narrative of phoenix-like resurrection which saw United become world football's most famous club. Forty years after becoming the first club to win the European Cup, a statue to commemorate the 'Holy Trinity' was unveiled outside Old Trafford (in the same year Cristiano Ronaldo became the fourth United player to win the Ballon d'Or).

After 1968 the club fell into decline and were already relegated when Denis Law (now playing for local rivals City) scored his famous backheeled goal on the last day of the 1973-74 season. Promoted the following season, they won the FA Cup in 1977, 1983 and 1985 before beginning their long march with Alex Ferguson in 1986. Winning the FA Cup again in 1990 provided breathing space as did European Cup Winners' Cup in 1991 with an all British-and-Irish team but by the time the first Premier League season got underway in 1992, United had gone 25 years without a league title.

United had dominated the first five seasons of the FA Youth Cup in the same way Real Madrid did with the first five seasons of the European Cup. The team that won the competition five times between 1953 and 1957 went on to become the 'Busby Babes': Duncan Edwards in 1953, Charlton and Edwards in 1954 and 1955, Charlton in 1956. In 1992 a team featuring Ryan Giggs, Gary Neville, David Beckham and Nicky Butt won the competition again. The following year Giggs was absent from the team which lost in the final to Leeds but Neville, Beckham and Butt were joined by Gary's younger brother Phil and Paul Scholes. Just as Charlton and Edwards had become part of the 'Busby Babes,' these six would become part of the rather more awkward-sounding 'Fergie's Fledglings.'

Ryan Giggs made his debut in March 1991, Gary Neville made his in September 1992 and Paul Scholes made his in September 1994. They now make up three of the top five United players in terms of games played. At the time of writing, Giggs is first with 910 appearances, Scholes third with 699 and Neville fifth with 602. Longevity alone makes them worthy successors to the original 'Trinity.' All three have shown the loyalty of local lads playing for the club they grew up supporting (Giggs from Swinton, Neville from Bury and Scholes from Middleton). Throughout the years, they have provided the core for star players such as Cantona, Keane, Beckham, Rooney and Ronaldo to work around. But what marks them out is their success.

In 1976 Liverpool became the most successful club in England outright, with nine league titles to Arsenal's eight. They went on to win nine more titles over the next fifteen years. When United won their eighth league title in 1993, Liverpool fans waved a banner: 'Come back when you've won 18." The incredible thing is that this team, with such important contributions from Neville, Giggs and Scholes, did just that and in 2011 United won their 19th league title.

Gary Neville never enjoyed such heroic moments as Ryan Giggs' winner against Arsenal in the 1999 FA Cup semi-final or Paul Scholes' winner against Barcelona in the 2008 Champions League semi-final. He would never have won the Ballon d'Or but throughout his career he did show the tenacity to become one of the best players in his position. Charlton, Law and Best make up three of the top five United scorers of all time but Charlton won 3 league titles, whilst Law and Best won two. Giggs has won 12 and Scholes has won 10 so far. Neville won 8. Loyalty, longevity but above all success - this is what makes United's modern trinity more-than worthy successors to the originals.

How do Heathrow runway talks affect Manchester?

The combined passenger numbers for London's four airports in 2011 are over 130m, just over half of which is accounted for by Heathrow, the world's third busiest airport (although these figures suggest that London is the world's busiest airport city).

London Heathrow	69,433,220
London Gatwick	33,674,264
London Stansted	18,052,843
London Luton	9,513,704
	130,647,031

By contrast, Manchester Airport is the 17th busiest in the European Union with 18,892,756 passengers in 2011 (slightly more than Stansted).

The distances involved in getting between the "London" airports suggests that the concept of an airport city is always going to be a loose one. The distance between Stansted and Gatwick is 54 miles; Stansted to Heathrow is 42 miles; Heathrow to Gatwick (the core) is around 25 miles.

Of the busiest airports nearest to Manchester Airport, Liverpool John Lennon (24 miles away) had 5,215,161 passengers in 2011; East Midlands (53 miles away) had 4,215,192; and Birmingham (66 miles away) had 8,616,269.

Of the other airports in the British Isles, Dublin (18,741,095) and Edinburgh (9,385,245) and Glasgow (6,880,217) are the busiest in terms of passenger numbers for 2011.

These figures show that the airport map of the British Isles is dominated by London, as we would expect. Manchester and Dublin are the next busiest, the second tier if you like. A third tier would include Edinburgh, Birmingham, Glasgow and Liverpool.

 

Manchester is one of only a handful of airports with the runway capacity for the new Airbus A380 megaplanes. The first to arrive at Manchester did so in September 2010 after a flight from Dubai. Soon afterwards, March 2011 saw the news that Emirates (based in Dubai), Etihad (based in Abu Dhabi) and Qatar Aiways (based in Doha) were all putting Manchester at the centre of their long-term strategy amidst signs that Heathrow was running beyond capacity. This is significant when we bear in mind that as recently as June 2012 it was remarked that the Gulf Carriers were "taking over the world."

If Manchester can build itself up as a Middle East hub then it looks to have a fairly secure future, with onward connections from there to the Far East. One possible factor in Manchester's success is the link between its football clubs and their growing global fanbase. Certainly the success of the two teams can't be a bad thing in terms of increasing the city's global brand. It helps that in September 2008, Manchester City were bought out by the Abu Dhabi United Group, who have close links with Etihad. In September 2011, it was reported that the Qatari royal family were interested in buying out Manchester United.

Manchester Airport is possibly the city's best asset. Located just over 7 miles south of the city centre in the Cheshire commuter belt, what makes it most attractive is the room for further expansion - not just of the airport itself but the businesses that rely on it. One recent theory suggests that airports will be central to the cities of the future. Even if seaports, railways and motorways will remain strategically important, it's likely that airports will grow in importance and this has recently been recognised by the government.

Plans for a £6,000,000 Airport City in Manchester (i.e. business park or enterprize zone) were being talked about in April 2011 "the first of its kind in the UK." These were endorsed by the Chancellor George Osborne in January 2012, who talked about creating "an international business destination to compete with similar locations in Barcelona, Amsterdam and Frankfurt."

Locally this development can only be a good thing in terms of bringing further investment and jobs to the area. There are misgivings about the fact that a lot of this investment will go in to the already affluent southern outskirts of the city. But the emphatic rejection of a congestion charge scheme in December 2008 is just one indication that the long-term attractiveness of doing business in Manchester city centre may be an issue that needs to be resolved.

Another long-term factor is the construction of the HS2 rail network. Although it will be many years before this is built, Manchester Airport has been proposed as a strategically important site for a train station along the route. Would this have the effect of taking business away from Manchester? Would it bring more benefit to London and Birmingham? These are questions which won't become relevant until 2033 if the line does actually get built.

If it does get built, High Speed rail may offer competition to the airlines itself at least in so far as connections to London, Paris, Amsterdam, Frankfurt are concerned. However, as we have seen the future of Manchester Airport in particular may lie in the long-distance routes to North America, the Middle East and beyond.

The more immediate concern is over the government's recent proposals for talks about increasing airport capacity in the South-East, with the controversial idea of a third runway at Heathrow not being ruled out. The fact that such an idea is proving so controversial benefits Manchester but the distances involved mean that Birmingham stands to lose/gain the most from any decision. It's easy to imagine some sort of rebranding of Birmingham Airport as Birmingham London after the construction of HS2. Manchester is well located, further away, to avoid such a scenario and it already has the passenger numbers to justify investment in the Airport City development. Once this is built, Manchester may even be able to market itself as a credible alternative to overcrowded, congested London.

Is it time we had a Manchester Music Museum?

This article from the Independent in May 2004 suggests that plans to set up a Manchester Music Museum were being made at the time by a company called "100% Cotton" and implies that the project have fallen through at a later stage due to problems in finding a suitable site or raising sufficient funds. One possibility is that the materials prepared for the museum may have been used for temporary exhibitions at Urbis, e.g. "Sex, Seditionaries and the Sex Pistols" in 2005, and something on the Hacienda in 2007. Now that Urbis has been transformed into the National Football Museum, the city no longer has a space for such exhibits and it's only a matter of time before the growing calls for some kind of permanent gallery or museum documenting the rise and fall of the Manchester Music scene gather momentum.

A recreation of the Hacienda's interior at London's V&A, March 2012

The importance of Ben Kelly's interior design work on the Hacienda has been made the subject of part of an exhibition on British Design (1942-2012) at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. The picture above is reminiscent of the recreation of The Cavern in The Beatles Story in Liverpool and any Manchester Music Museum would surely be centred around something similar. Perhaps another room would try to recreate the atmosphere of a Northern Soul all-nighter at The Twisted Wheel, etc. Manchester's tourist numbers are growing and will probably continue to do so. However the city has to make the most of its unique selling points - this site gets a steady stream of visitors from around the world who've been Googling "Joy Division"; The Smiths also have an extremely dedicated international fanbase (as seen by the unlikely popularity of Salford Lads' Club as a tourist destination); the recent Stone Roses reunion showed that there is a huge demand for Manchester-related musical nostalgia.

The National Centre for Popular Music in Sheffield opened in March 1999 and closed in June 2000

Many feel that the city makes too big a deal of its past musical prominence, a debate which has seen the BBC asking where the next generation of Manchester bands are going to come from and others arguing that the city should be looking forward not backwards, etc. On the news that Peter Hook was releasing a book on his experiences as part of Joy Division, one wag commented that "someone should buy that man a milking stool." This level of cynicism reflects a city unwilling to rest on its laurels, etc. and suggests that any concrete plans for a Manchester Music Museum would be highly controversial, even if "done right" or "done well." Key players would almost certainly include the excellent Manchester District Music Archive but the project would probably still struggle to attract funding during a time of economic belt-tightening. Similar projects have failed in the past. The National Centre for Popular Music in Sheffield was closed just over a year after it opened because of low visitor numbers. Ironically (just as Urbis risked becoming a white elephant until it was converted into the National Football Museum), the Millenium Dome was converted into the British Music Experience in March 2009. The questions remains: how long before we have a Manchester Music Experience and on what kind of scale would it be?

New Year's Eve 83/84 - The Smiths' first US gig

This video shows Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr talking about the band's first US gig. They had just released their second single This Charming Man in the UK. The gig was at Danceteria in New York on New Years Eve 1983/84. Opening was the venue's hat-check girl, soon to make her UK live debut at the Hacienda in Manchester.

The End of [Manchester Music] History in 1992

In 1992, Francis Fukuyama's The End of History was published, arguing that with the collapse of communism three years earlier, human history had essentially reached its end goal (which was liberal democracy). Events would still occur (notably the 11th September 2001 attack on the World Trade Centre in New York) but none of these would radically change the direction of history and politics - Fukuyama's thesis remained the same. The idea that history has a beginning and an end was not new - the philosopher GWF Hegel apparently claimed that history had ended with Napoleon's victory in the Battle of Jena in 1806 (an idea which must have been challenged by the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway in 1830).

   When charting the rise and fall of Manchester music, it's easy to find a beginning - the choice is between the Sex Pistols first gig at the Lesser Free Trade Hall in June 1976 or Buzzcocks' release of Spiral Scratch in January 1977 (both of which are interlinked). In theory it would be possible to go all the way back to the Hollies but it's easy to see how this is essentially a different kind of music/youth culture. From punk onwards, Manchester was at the forefront with Joy Division, The Fall, New Order, The Smiths, The Happy Mondays and The Stone Roses. Which brings us to Fukuyama's idea of an endpoint - the point after which great music might still be produced but it doesn't change the overall direction of travel, a "post-music" stage if you like.

   The big question is whether to include Oasis in a history of Manchester Music. My original intention was to write a history of the years 1976 to 1996 with the IRA bomb of June 1996, almost exactly 20 years after the first Sex Pistols gig. Divided into five equal parts (four-year periods 1976-1980, 1980-1984, 1984-1988, 1988-1992 and 1992-1996) it fitted the NME's list of their top 100 tracks, in which five of the top ten were by Manchester bands: Joy Division's Love Will Tear Us Apart (1980), New Order's Blue Monday (1983), The Smiths' There Is A Light That Never Goes Out (1986), The Stone Roses' She Bangs the Drums (1989) and Oasis' Wonderwall (1995).

   The case for including Oasis based on popularity is strong. 1994's Definitely Maybe was the fastest-selling debut album at the time it was released. 1995's (What's the Story) Morning Glory? is the fourth best-selling album ever in the UK. But if popularity is taken into consideration, why not focus more on Take That or Simply Red? What began with the Sex Pistols in 1976 and Buzzcocks in 1977 had already finished by the time Oasis arrived. Oasis were like Baudrillard's Simulacrum, a constructed reality cobbled together from what had come before. The classic example is the description of Liam Gallagher as a cross between John Lennon and John Lydon. The Stone Roses may not have been particularly original but Oasis took lack of originality to a new level. As if to make up for this, they went to great lengths to emphasis their support for struggling Manchester City as a sign of authenticity - which itself was a sign that music was now little more than a soundtrack for football in the Premier League era.

   If Oasis are post-music, then where did the history of Manchester music end? 1989 was a strong year, with the release The Stone Roses' debut album. 1990 was also strong, with the release of The Happy Mondays' third album (considered the peak of their career). In 1991, there was also a lot going on: 808 State released In Yer Face, The Mock Turtles released Can You Dig It, James re-released Sit Down.   In 1992, Manchester music was in decline - something often contrasted with the emergence of the Seattle grunge scene (and perhaps best captured in the UK with Nirvana's 1992 headline slot at Reading Festival).

   In this context of decline, the rise of Take That is significant. Created by a former casting agent from the Royal Exchange (who went on to become the owner of three bars in the Gay Village), Take That are rightly considered a Manchester band (even though Robbie Williams is from Stoke-on-Trent and Gary Barlow is from Frodsham, near Runcorn). Their breakthrough came towards the end of 1992, with the release of three singles: It Only Takes A Minute in June, A Million Love Songs in October, Could It Be Magic in November. Whilst their previous singles had barely broken into the top 40, these three all made the top ten, and over the next four years they would notch up eight number ones as they become arguably the biggest British band since The Beatles.

   If the emergence of Take That represented an endpoint for Manchester music, this isn't to say that Manchester bands didn't produce any decent music afterwards. The Stone Roses' Love Spreads (1994), The Charlatans' Tellin' Stories (1997), Ian Brown's F.E.A.R. (2001) and Elbow's Grounds for Divorce (2008) are just some of the great tracks from the post-music period that spring to mind. But none of these artists changed the direction of music in as significant a way as the bands associated with post-punk/new wave, early indie or acid house. Neither can we say that the emergence of Take That was such a bad thing. Arguably the band's success did as much as anything to promote the regeneration of Manchester.

   1992 may have represented the end of the Manchester music "grand narrative" but it was also an exciting time for the city. Phase 1 of the Metrolink light-rail network opened between Bury, Victoria, Piccadilly and Altrincham. An unlikely bid for the 2000 Olympics was gaining momentum and generating a spirit of confidence. The Gay Village was growing in popularity. The first season of the Premier League got underway, with Manchester United signing Eric Cantona in November to add to an already strong (though underachieveing) side. Even in the political arena, the recently re-elected Conservative government found themselves in trouble in September when they were forced to remove the pound from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism. This was potentially good for Manchester as a Labour stronghold (unlike rivals Birmingham and London).

   The relationship between the end of Manchester music and the city's subsequent regeneration is one of the themes in  Owen Hatherley's Manchester chapter in his Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain. For him, the regeneration signalled the death of the music scene but I think there's a strong argument that Manchester music had already run its course before the regeneration began (if only slightly before). If late-92 Take That did represent the endpoint, then what's interesting is the almost-seamless transition between Manchester as a music city and Manchester as a football city (which isn't to say that football wasn't a major factor pre-93 and music post-92).