Two BBC radio journalists chart the turbulent fate of Manchester City FC through the 1990s with extensive original material gleaned from interviews with all the key participants. Joe Royle is a personal hero of mine and I have an uncle whose lifelong loyalty to the club was demolished by the shennanigans described in the first half of the book. By the time I had finished reading I better understood his distress and the scale of Royle's achievement. Regrettably, the last chapters present the events of the Premiership promotion season (1999-2000) as a lazy match by match diary interspersed with league tables. I got a certain pleasure from this because it was also the year that Ipswich Town won promotion through the playoffs (one of the highlights of my life) but the desire to publish fast (within months of promotion) does not excuse such slackness. ( )