retiredmartin

August 2026. Manchester.

Your traditional contractually obligated “first game at the Etihad” post you’ve no interest in.

AFC Bournemouth at a traditional time, too, 2pm on a Sunday. The August fixture traditionally finds me scrabbling around for “new and shiny” pubs, having long ago completed the Greater Manchester section of the GBG.

And there are a few newbies under the arches and on Dale Street, which my youngest son has just left for the greater delights of Stockport.

I decided to get a dry day in to impress Mrs RM, and had early lunch of Chicken Katsu Ramen (CKRNSS 4) at Shoryu in Piccadilly Gardens,

a place where the wonderful Anastasia Coope declared the food so bad her soul left her body during her gig at the Rat & Pigeon last year. But then, Americans are fussy eaters.

Manchester is very cosmopolitan these days; I’m sure I saw an Irish pub in Stevenson Square. I got talking to a couple of football tourists from Majorca who’d spent more on their match ticket and shirt than I paid for my whole season ticket.

“We want to go to the famous pub near the ground“. They mean Mary D’s.

Don’t ask me why it’s called Mary D’s Beamish Bar when they sell Guinness.

I think I persuaded them there were better examples of the Mancunian pub in the centre, so they’ll probably have ended up in the Piccadilly Spoons.

And so to the Etihad, about to open a wondrous looking hotel that will be just outside my budget, where sadly the Holt Bitter pump is yet to be installed despite my asking for it in the annual survey, and a chance to see my £330 a season single seat in the East Stand.

Have Pep Guardiola and Enzo Maresca ever been seen together in the same room ?