Cameras move in

Early days yet, but it is hard to see how Manchester City’s behind-the-scenes Amazon Prime series will deliver what the makers of contemporary documentaries about famous English football clubs surely now refer to as the ‘Ian Ayre moment’.

We speak, of course, of that unforgettable footage in the 2012 Fox Soccer series Being: Liverpool when the club’s middle-aged then-general manager was featured cruising on his Harley-Davidson, in leathers and vintage open-face helmet. It was a standout highlight of the football documentary genre and one that you could only admire the director for negotiating into the cut, given that the club had editorial veto on anything that might embarrass them.

City’s Amazon Prime series is scheduled for release next year, a £10million project that is already in production, with camera crews filming at matches and the training ground. No doubt there will be surprises in store, although on the standards Ayre set on Being: Liverpool, the producers will be demanding something like Ferran Soriano skateboarding or exclusive footage of Txiki Begiristain cutting loose at his zumba class.

The series is the latest attempt at an old concept that often produces very watchable results, even if in recent years the clubs have tried to turn them into PR exercises. Nothing has ever topped An Impossible Job, the 1994 documentary about Graham Taylor’s doomed England reign, which he bravely permitted to operate with editorial independence.