Passing Bramall Lane, the only part of Sheffield flat enough to feel like Manchester, you are forced to suck in a gulp of air and exhale a trite aphorism to the effect of ‘oooh, it’s grim up north’. For, apart from the Stalinist concrete football stadium dominating the landscape, there is only a decrepit mixture of boarded up houses, defunct pubs, pie and chip shops, burnt out cars, feral whippets and the starving children of redundant miners playing with cast-off cutlery and drinking Henderson’s relish from broken bottles.