Manchester’s soulless content machine football clubs sum up post-imperial Britain | Barney Ronay

United and City dominate the news cycle with stories so strange and vast they threaten to consume the rest of the league

In Manchester this weekend it was possible to bookend your Thursday‑to‑Sunday entertainment with two cultural events. First up, a debut screening of the re‑released and uncensored Ken Russell film The Devils at Trafford Odeon. And three days later, three miles down the road, Manchester United versus Aston Villa at Old Trafford.

As expected, one of these events provided a visceral cinematic experience, a deeply disturbing two-hour public meditation on the meaning of faith, blood, fear, power, ritual and the fetishising of objects, climaxing in an orgiastic crowd scene of depraved but undeniably erotic abandon, all acted out on a set in a state of glorious and performative ruin.