Tag Archives: liverpool

Afterglow

During a season in which stand out moments have been largely absent, the climactic ending of the Liverpool FA Cup tie was an all-time classic that will never be forgotten. 2 weeks on and the sequence of events during extra time still haven’t quite sunk in, however I do possess a unsightly 50p-sized lump on my left shin as a memento of the day. To go from ‘season over’ to ‘Wembley bound’ in the space of 15 minutes was something I never saw coming and served as a reminder that football still retains the ability to make me deliriously happy on occasion. I just need to be mindful of the fact I’m no longer 15 years old and moderate my goal celebrations to something more befitting a man who turned 50 last year.

When the question of potentially leaving OT has come up in recent weeks, I’ve been pretty unequivocal about the fact I’d have no issue with moving into a state-of-the-art new build if it was located next door. Re-watching footage of Amad’s winner from 50 different camera angles has caused me to reconsider. Although I accept that OT needs a facelift, there’s no way it’s ‘falling down’ as the song claims. The key thing for me is, could the atmosphere of that Liverpool game be replicated in a shiny brand spanker built nearby? Whilst theoretically the answer is ‘yes’, the overwhelming likelihood is ‘no’ so I’m firmly in favour of staying put now, I’ve decided.

Indeed, the more I’ve thought about it, the more I reckon leaving OT would actually be a terrible idea. Sure, the Emirates and Spurs’ new grounds are visually impressive and have better facilities than their predecessors but they’re utterly bereft of soul – aesthetically pleasant enormodomes that have priced out the majority of people who frequented Highbury and White Hart Lane. OT 2.0 would be exactly the same. They aren’t going to follow the Allianz Arena model and make the thing affordable for all, it’ll just be a gigantic monument to football commercialism with a few cheesy adornments (hotel, ‘fan park’ etc) tacked on.

The main driver behind moving as opposed to re-developing OT is the club’s desire to maximise revenue from ticket sales. They hope to increase engagement with high spending football tourists whilst driving up prices until legacy supporters are in the minority. It’s a process that’s currently being repeated at several Premier League clubs. Most regulars just want to go and watch the game and couldn’t care less if there’s a McDonald’s or a Nando’s built adjacent to the ground. A bigger souvenir shop and a couple of beer tents aren’t going to help regenerate the area and enrich the local community, it’s just a convenient way of piggybacking on Trafford Council’s Wharfside development plans in the vain hope of securing additional public or private funding.

A new OT will be sold to us as something that’s necessary if United are going to compete at the very top again, but I’d argue that isn’t the case at all. Re-developing the current stadium does present significant challenges (the railway line being the most obvious), but if we’re talking £1billion+ budgets then I fail to see how building over it isn’t possible. If they extended the south stand, stuck a new roof on and re-did the concourses OT (no, honestly) could be the best ground in the country again within 5-10 years. They could even cover it in Bacofoil if they wanted to appease the e-reds and mimic the result of the recent Bernabeu refresh.

If we do leave OT it will be for something overpriced, over-budget and distinctly underwhelming once the initial novelty has worn off. Yes, a true “Wembley of the North” as promised. Expect season ticket prices to eclipse London levels and despite the multiple beers on offer, they’ll be ridiculously overpriced and I guarantee each sip will be tinged with regret for what we left behind. I’ve got no desire for a future consisting of chicken tenders, a choice of fries, vegan wraps, annoyingly loud speakers and an oversized scoreboard. Anyone actively in favour of any of this should be considered a menace.

The international break following the Liverpool game led to an outbreak of misplaced optimism and suggestions that the stirring comeback witnessed might turn out to be a turning point. Any such thoughts were obliterated after the Brentford game where the performance was truly one of the worst of the season. Once again, the midfield was an absolute shambles with the opposition given a free run on goal every time they gained possession. McTominay played for over 100 minutes and genuinely can’t have touched the ball more than a dozen times. It was excruciating to watch.

It wasn’t just him. Wan Bissaka had another of those games that makes you wonder if the coaching staff actually talk to the players at all. Rashford did that thing where he seems to be channeling Antonio Valencia when he receives the ball, ambles forward a few yards and then stops dead. And Bruno? My word. He’s always been a bit of a wildcard with his decision making but he’s now so erratic it’s like he’s taking a huge dose of psychedelics an hour before kick off. The Liverpool game was a beautifully bonkers sequence of the manager rolling consecutive sixes. Brentford was more indicative of the reality. We are utterly hopeless.

Most match-goers remain vaguely supportive of Ten Hag but if we’re being honest, the Brentford performance and his post-game admission they ‘wanted it more’ signal that he’s unlikely to last beyond the end of the season. Any lingering hopes of CL football have been extinguished and that’s been the minimum requirement for United managers hoping to survive post-Ferguson. I’m not certain anyone else could have done much better given what he inherited and the awful run of injuries this term, but ultimately we’ve gone backwards over the last 12 months and that’s on him.

Whilst I strongly suspect his departure is inevitable now, I’m still not convinced it would be the right thing to do. If there were obvious candidates to replace him I might see the logic in pulling the trigger, but names like Gareth Southgate and that bloke from Wolves don’t exactly fill me with any confidence. We have to accept there aren’t any quick fixes available and that the current re-build remains a work in progress. Another managerial reset benefits no one except some serial underachievers in the dressing room hoping for another stay of execution. Although it might seem a grim prospect at this precise moment, Ten Hag needs time and we need to be patient.

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Pretty Vacant

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After a summer of discontent featuring a squad re-build progressing at a glacial pace, it was important that United got off to a good start this season. If ten Hag was disappointed after the opening day Brighton defeat, he must have felt almost suicidal when the half time whistle blew at Brentford. I’ve been going a long time now and I can’t recall seeing anything quite as bad as that opening 45 minutes. The mood was downbeat in the pub beforehand but I don’t think anyone anticipated the absolute horror show we were about to witness. I walked out at HT as did many others.

Of course, it never helps when your goalie starts throwing the ball in his own net. Everyone has their own take on De Gea but the consensus amongst people whose opinion I value is that he should have been binned off a long time ago. Whether Henderson was a good enough replacement is debatable, but in my opinion he should have been given a 6 month run in the team once he’d regained fitness last season. We all know De Gea has numerous weaknesses, but crucially it’s no longer enough to merit his place simply “because he’s a good shot stopper”. Christ, all Premier League keepers are good shot stoppers, aren’t they?

It’s far too early to be questioning the new manager’s methods, but watching De Gea’s feeble attempts at playing out from the back as opposed to launching a goal kick upfield was excruciating. When a keeper isn’t comfortable with the ball at his feet, he’s unlikely to develop this facet to his game at 31 years old. Brentford had clearly done their homework and exploited this in the most brutal manner imaginable. It might sound harsh and there’s no doubt De Gea has been a tremendous servant to the club over the last decade, but he needs replacing if we’re going to progress. It was a deeply embarrassing day all round.

As pretty much all pre-season optimism had dissipated at this point, several highly vocal, self-reverential nutcases on twitter had a plan. Pausing momentarily from working themselves into a frenzy about players they’d never heard of 3 days previously, the idea of #emptyoldtrafford was born. Apparently if this hashtag was RT’ed enough times, Old Trafford would be deserted for the forthcoming Liverpool game and the Glazer’s resolve would miraculously crumble. The legions outside would carry Jim Ratcliffe into the stadium where he would by interviewed pitchside by Jamie Carragher and Gary Neville, presumably.

With 70,000 match-goers lined up outside OT, one could only assume that the twitter lads planned to stand outside their bedrooms in solidarity. The only certainty was that the campaign was doomed to failure from the moment it was conceived and that internet gobshites posing as United fans vastly overestimate the influence they have over actual United fans. Instead, a real-life protest organised by real-life supporters attracted huge numbers and widespread media attention all by itself. Who would have thought such a thing possible?

The twitter reds constantly bang on about division and toxicity amongst the “fanbase” but what they fail to grasp is that despite the numbers they attract, their influence on people in and around the club is negligible. They might consider themselves knowledgeable, but ultimately their experiences amount to little more than arguing on the internet about their favourite tv show. These individuals are never going to effect change because they possess zero credibility amongst match-goers. United supporters’ feelings are probably more aligned now than they have been at any time since the Glazers took over. At this point you’d struggle to find anyone with something positive to say about the club’s owners.

To be clear, I don’t think the idea of emptying the ground at some point should be disregarded entirely. The idea has the potential to be a highly effective protest but you’re not going to achieve this with only 5 days notice and nobody of any substance on board. Get MUST, the fanzines, TRA and The 1958 behind it and with proper publicity the idea might have a decent chance. As unpalatable as it might sound to those of a ‘burn it all down now’ disposition, Liverpool at home so early in the season was never a realistic prospect for orchestrating a mass boycott.

The fervour of the pre-match protest led to one of the best atmospheres OT has seen in a long time. The place was rocking during the first half and the team responded with a performance that was a vast improvement on the dire effort shown the previous weekend. For the first time in months we saw evidence of the basics in place. Every player looked focused, committed and willing to put in a full shift for 90 minutes. We know they’re some distance from challenging for the top prizes but if the players can maintain a level of effort somewhere above bare minimum, I expect our fortunes might improve quickly.

As is customary following the Liverpool game, there was another debate about the ‘murderers’ chant and whether or not it’s a reference to Hillsborough. It’s getting really tiresome now. Firstly, there’s no doubt the antipathy between the two sets of supporters gives the fixture an edge that nobody wants to lose. However, the ‘murderers’ insult is aired more frequently and vociferously now than it ever was previously. People point to Liverpool fans singing about Munich in the past as some sort of justification but honestly, it’s straw clutching in the extreme. It’s 2022 and we should be doing better.

I’m not suggesting that reparations need to be made and we should start handing out garlands of flowers to each other, I just find it very sad. In the past I’ve caught myself trying to explain the nuances to people as if the song actually being a reference to Heysel validates it somehow, but in truth it doesn’t. The tit-for-tat nonsense needs to stop. There can still be a rivalry and a mutual loathing without celebrating tragedies that have befallen the respective clubs. In simple terms, singing ‘murderers’ doesn’t reflect well on United fans and it makes us look and sound like dickheads.

After such a positive performance and result against Liverpool, Southampton away suddenly felt like a big game. United have been abject for months but we seem to be particularly awful at early kick offs, not to mention the fact we hadn’t seen back-to-back league wins since February. A scruffy 1-0 win was more than acceptable despite the fact that all composure went out of the window after taking the lead. The last half hour was desperate at times and we seemed determined to give the ball away at every opportunity. It’s far too early to say whether a recovery is underway but I’m taking solace from the fact the players at least look slightly interested again. That will do for now.

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Up To Our Hips

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Well that escalated quickly, didn’t it? There I was, quietly buzzing after a derby win and chuckling at Liverpool getting knocked out of Europe. Then the next thing you know I’m sat in the house, drinking too much, steadily munching through a fridge full of stockpiled food and cut off from the world outside. Pretty much a standard weekend then… but then they announced Coronavirus had arrived so normal life was promptly cancelled.

To be honest readers, personally speaking, it’s been an absolute doddle. I’m already an anti-social curmudgeon so being told not to go out hasn’t really affected me. Plus, let’s be honest now, a lockdown where you’re still allowed to leave the house every day isn’t really much of a lockdown at all. Being office-based meant I could work from home which proved another huge bonus. It started off being weird then quickly became ace once the realisation dawned I can do my job without getting dragged into banal conversations about things that people have read on Facebook every 10 minutes. 6 music on in the background, sun streaming though the window, showering at lunchtime… I honestly think I could live like this for another 12 months.

Not everyone sees it as a positive of course, because in reality it’s really fucking bad out there. Me, happy as a pig in shit inside my own little bubble is one thing, but it’s really not funny at all when there’s a deadly virus on the loose and hundreds of people are dying every day. Not to mention the hundreds of thousands who are unable to work at all because they currently don’t have a job. Then you’ve got the NHS workforce and an army of key workers risking their lives on a daily basis, lacking essential PPE yet still intent on keeping everything ticking over until this shitstorm of a virus eventually subsides.

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The overall mood isn’t helped by the fact we’re being led by the shambolic troupe of gaslighting fuckwits who compose the senior-level of British government. Not an ounce of compassion or common sense between them, they saw this thing coming a mile off yet still managed to balls it up completely at every turn. Blundering through press conferences, manipulating testing figures and showing themselves up as the lying, evasive, deceitful twats you always suspected they’d be during a time of national crisis. It’s almost enough to make you wish football would come back.

Almost, but not quite. Because as anyone with even the teenie-weeniest bit of common sense would agree, talk about professional football resuming right now is not only grossly insensitive, it’s completely fucking idiotic. Straight away they were at it, before the death toll had even reached 3 figures. The very moment matches were cancelled and precious revenue streams turned off, the self-interested guardians of the sport immediately started dribbling on about the need to finish the season at all costs to preserve ‘the integrity of the game’. Integrity: “the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles”. Hahahaha, you couldn’t make it up.

The Premier League’s interpretation of integrity seems a little more abstract than how most people commonly interpret the word. In their desperation to launch #projectrestart it quickly became apparent that they were prepared to do literally anything to get football back on television. Playing in China, playing behind closed doors, neutral stadiums, shortening game lengths and banning spitting(?) were just a handful of the ever more ludicrous suggestions being mooted as deaths around the country continued to rise.

We all know that top-level football did its utmost to absolve itself of any sense of social conscience and civic engagement many years ago. It happily sold its soul in pursuit of untold riches and anyone opposed to the frantic cash grab was left feeling like a tree-hugging relic. We live in a world where people dedicate their lives to arguing on twitter that owning a tiny portion of land in East Manchester and laundering billions of £‘s into a football club to legitimise a murderous, despotic regime is actually something to be applauded.

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Greed and self-interest are nothing new in the football world. However, during the current doomsday scenario of a global pandemic, the intention to plough on in spite of the obvious risk to everyone connected was absolutely breathtaking. I mean, we know football administrators are morally deficient in most cases, but I wasn’t expecting them to be so unapologetically brazen in announcing the fact. Surely now would be the time to demonstrate some decorum by keeping quiet for a few months? Maybe prioritise the health and well-being of employees above all else, just like every other workplace has been forced to. More fool me for expecting anything different, I guess.

One unexpected thing I didn’t see coming was how well our own club conducted itself throughout. Unusually for the PR disasterclass that is MUFC, there wasn’t a misstep to be seen whilst other Premier League clubs continued to make complete arses of themselves. Season ticket renewals frozen, a commitment to refunding any games unplayed, casual staff paid until the end of the season and players donating 30% of their wages to the NHS. We’re the first to point out when the club does something wrong – it’s one of this fanzine’s raisons d’etre – so it’s only right we highlight those odd occasions when they get things right. Fair play to all concerned.

I suppose we should give a nod of acknowledgement to Corona for the two-footed, knee-high challenge it delivered to Liverpool’s title-challenge just as they were clean through on goal. I know this makes us look incredibly petty and bitter but what else are we supposed to do? Should we forget the decades of intense rivalry and start lighting candles for them instead? I don’t think so. Let’s make this perfectly clear. The clamour to restart Premier League football is motivated by money, but never underestimate the scousers’ influence and the consequences for any individual seen as conspiring to deny them their moment of glory.

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If it was any other club top of the table, there would be pressure to resume playing again but the narrative being played out in the tabloid press would be vastly different. My mind keeps going back 20 years to when any MUFC defeat was greeted like VE Day. If this was a United team closing in on a 3rd consecutive league title, I fully expect there’d be speeches in Parliament calling for the Premier League to cease and desist. Instead, we’re being fed the message that football’s return will somehow “lift the nation”. I suppose it might if you’re a Liverpool or a Leeds fan, but no one else seems to regard it as high on the list of priorities right now. Most are of the opinion it’s a ridiculous idea.

Ultimately, your response to a crisis like this reveals a lot about a person. You either take the sanguine approach and accept shit happens in life or you make an almighty tit of yourself, running round the supermarket hoovering up 700 bog rolls. No matter how much Liverpool delight in their hilarious ‘Tory Tory Man United’ jibes, let it be remembered that we weren’t the club furloughing staff and arguing with our own mayor after he deemed the Premier League’s resumption a “non-starter”. Interestingly, according to a report in The Times, Liverpool were supportive of moves to abandon the Women’s Super League on safety grounds. Probably just a coincidence that they’re in the relegation places there, I expect.

Anyway, that’s me done I think. We live in strange, uncertain times and whatever your situation, I hope you’re doing okay and filling your time productively. Try not to strangle your loved ones and I’ll see you next season when we’re all 25 stone and suffering with chronic liver disease. Wash your hands, take care and enjoy the extended break.