Reaction to Manchester City’s Amazon documentary All Or Nothing has been overwhelmingly positive. Only a Mr J Mourinho, c/o The Lowry Hotel, expressed notable dissatisfaction, so they must be doing something right.

The story of Manchester City’s gilded, frictionless progress to the 2017-2018 Title needed a villain, and who better than the Manchester United manager? “A movie without me doesn’t sell much. It needed me in there,” said Mourinho, his grasp of drama as assured as his recent handling of star midfielders is not. But Mourinho’s predictable disdain aside, people have enjoyed the eight-part series.

The man from the Daily Mail called it “something special, not sanitised”. The Metro newspaper said it “provides an insight quite unlike anything before”. Sam Wallace, of this parish, said: “The dead hand of the censors is all over it,” but fairly added: “In this, City are no different to any of the Premier League big beasts and their brands they protect so fiercely.”

Sam's view seems closest to the truth. The club say they did not have final approval of what was shown but had the power to veto scenes that might be legally or commercially sensitive, a distinction not easy to dissect. One thing is sure: a situation where clubs can project their image without the distortion, curation or scrutiny of an independent media would suit the clubs themselves very nicely.

Public appetite for this is growing. While it should be stressed this is only football, is this Official Season Biography not typical of the age? The idea that a free, independent media is a sine qua non of a functioning society is no longer rock solid. Contempt for institutions like the media, and the judiciary, has created a vacuum where autocrats have rushed in. Attacking the messenger as a paid shill or puppet with an agenda has been a winning strategy for politicians. Football, like politics, is something that people engage with emotionally rather than intellectually. Thus it is well suited for edicts handed down from strongmen, unchallenged.

It helps that people hate journalists. Having just watched a colleague eat a boiled egg in the staff canteen, one has to concede that we are not a lovely bunch. An interesting footnote to England’s uplifting World Cup was the near-universal disgust on social media when papers printed a picture of the England team-sheet in the hand of a coach. The football writers, from a background where they attempt to find out interesting things and relay them to readers, viewed this as fair game. Their duty, even. A lot of people thought otherwise. Some giddier goats called the hacks “traitors”. The logical conclusion of having a media that only covers what the institution wants it to is to do away with the media altogether and have the institution communicate with the public directly.

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That, essentially, is the future as suggested by Manchester City’s partnership with Amazon, and in the attempts by sportspeople to take total ownership, without challenge, of their image via projects like The Players’ Tribune.

How big sporting institutions would like to be able to market directly to their customers. I'm sorry, I mean “talk directly to their fans”, without the impediment of a middleman who might not deliver the message exactly as they want it. If that is what the public wants, that is what the public will get: “access” instead of being held to account. There will be no scrutiny, and we will not be able to complain. Please exit through the club shop.