NOTTINGHAM was this week reported as being England’s “first City of Football”.

That’s according to Sport England who have, admirably it has to be said, donated £1.6million to the Midlands city to develop the game at grassroots.

It’s funny how you read things. My brain initially computed this story as meaning it had been voted the country’s major city of football.

At closer inspection – and the confusion would have been avoided by turning the sentence around – it emerges Nottingham is the first place to be awarded the City of Football title.

Well done Nottingham for being so committed to getting more people playing the game.

It’s admirable, but I’m more interested in the parallel thought thrown up by the absence of decent grammar in the original story.

So, which is England’s first city of football – ie the biggest and most important city?

Well, we can discount Nottingham right away, if only for the fact that it is the only city where reporters had to buy their own programme in the 10 years I covered Bury. It was Notts County by the way.

Birmingham can forget it. The country’s Second City it might be, but it’s well down in football terms.

By the process of elimination I am heading towards the North West, but bare with me while I dismiss London.

The capital has more fans watching football every weekend but that’s only because it’s 10 times bigger and has tons more clubs than anywhere else.

Chelsea, Spurs, Arsenal and West Ham are major clubs but if Manchester and Liverpool had the population of London (500,000 against 10 million) they could fill five stadiums.

So, which is the bigger city of football – Manchester or Liverpool?

Both have won about the same amount of trophies (now don’t argue United and Liverpool fans...), and they both have a similar amount of fans.

History is irrelevant because the phrase doesn’t mean anything, so the only way to decide is on present-day fortunes.

City and United have won six trophies in the last four years to Liverpool’s one so that makes Manchester England’s ‘First City of Football’.

I could be wrong, of course, as I was last week in this space when I said it was against the rules for Bolton’s local cricket clubs to pay amateur players. I am indebted to the Bolton League chairman Mike Hall for informing me that his league has no such rule and clubs have been free to pay amateurs for about the last 15 years.