“Hard working, rough around the edges, an acquired taste to some, but more widely, downright unpopular…” Burnley, the town and the football club, had a lot in common with the way Sean Dyche wanted football to be played.

In an era where identities are becoming increasingly heterogeneous due to globalisation, the film Gone Baby Gone has an intriguing opening sequence. Rooted in the idea of how where we come from has a bearing on what we turn out to become, the sequence suggests that it is “the things you don’t choose that make you who you are—your city, your neighbourhood, your family.”
While the narrative flows, we see images of people from working-class Boston who have been impacted by broken backgrounds, or, as Patrick Kenzie says, “fell through” the cracks after starting close by. The movie is a stark representation of the often under-privileged working class of Boston and how they struggle, presenting it in contrast with how American Psycho portrays the egocentricity of the elite in New York. In a way, both films do present a version of two sides of reality.
It is a rather valid depiction of football, especially if the gap between the so-called elites and the lesser clubs is seen through an unbiased lens. Those at the top are oblivious to the realities of those at the bottom of the leagues, and they exist in a cocoon that is afforded the privileges of modernising their club, style of play, and revenue models. Those at the bottom stick to survival. The gap is only widening, as was evident by the reaction of Everton fans, who went ballistic on relegation survival.