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Demon Days

The recent derby was a textbook example of how completely and utterly miserable football can make us feel on occasion. A vintage case of go home, go to bed early, media blackout for 5 days and everything can just fuck the fucking fuck off. So due to having nothing positive to say about anything at present, this month’s column has been abandoned and we’ll instead acknowledge our current woes by wallowing in the 10 most depressing results of the last 30 years. I’ve thought long and hard about this selection – I considered putting in games from yesteryear but decided to keep it personal by only selecting games/results experienced myself. So tough shit, Bobby Stokes – you missed the cut.

Note: Some may baulk at the non-inclusion of, say, for instance, the Champions League final defeats to Barca. I’ve tried to keep it real and opted for games that triggered genuine doom. Of course I was gutted losing to Barca but it was no great surprise and there was no great mental hangover afterwards… these are the results that proved difficult to shake for weeks and months, not just a couple of days as was the case post Rome/Wembley.

Liverpool (Wembley) League Cup Final – (1-2) March 1983

I wasn’t at this game, instead I listened to it on Radio 2 live radio commentary in my Gran’s front room – it was played at 3pm on a Saturday so wasn’t even on telly. All started very well with Norman’s opener before the Scousers equalised near the end and then won it via Ronnie Whelan’s curler in extra-time. I call still recall the sense of rage and injustice at the description of Grobbelaar’s outrageous assault on McQueen… unsurprisingly not punished due to the referee being George Courtney – not the last time we’d suffer at his hands. I cried after this. Tears. Proper tears.

Nottingham Forest (H) FA Cup QF – (0-1) March 1989

This one gets the nod just ahead of McClair’s penalty miss at Arsenal that saw us dumped out of the FA Cup in the 5th round a year previously – heartbreaking at the time because it happened in the one season when McClair never missed. Again I wasn’t present and instead listened to this on the BBC world service as I was stuck in Northern Germany somewhere on a school exchange. It was horrendous. The family I stayed with had a massive Alsatian that crapped in my room and for tea we had cabbage and sausages every night. Another refereeing injustice here as well. Brian Hill he was called. Shithead.

Manchester City (A) – (1-5) September 1989

Early-season giddiness stemming from the acquisitions of Webb, Pallister and Ince, the proposed Knighton takeover and the opening day thrashing of Arsenal had been well and truly obliterated following 3 successive defeats which left United down in 16th place by mid-September. Nevertheless, we’d spanked Millwall 5-1 the week before so there was some grounds for optimism as we headed to Maine Road – City were below us having only won one game all season. What followed was as baffling as it was depressing. United missed numerous chances and despite being on the defensive for much of the game, the 5 chances City had all went in. Mercifully, it was the last thing they had to celebrate for the next 2 decades.

Liverpool (A) – (0-2) April 1992

I recall queuing for 7 hours one Sunday morning to get a ticket for this. What had all season long promised to be a title winning party instead turned out to be a truly harrowing afternoon. In reality, all Liverpool did was confirm the inevitable with Leeds having stumbled past Sheffield United earlier in the day. A sequence of 3 miserable results in just 5 days had already killed off United’s hopes – a draw at Luton, the bank holiday Monday defeat at home to Forest and then Kenny Brown’s goal at West Ham. It was official, we really would never win the league.

West Ham United (A) – (1-1) May 1995

This was another killer. It began as a case of ‘more hope than expectation’ but as the afternoon developed there was the gradual realisation that Blackburn were indeed in the process of bottling it and a winner at Upton Park would give a United a 3rd successive title. Following McClair’s timely equaliser and despite over half an hour of bombardment of the West Ham penalty area, it just wouldn’t fucking go in. A timid showing in the FA Cup final a week later merely heightened the gloom

Fenerbahce (H) Champs League Group Stage – (0-1) October 1996

This one hurt. Really hurt. The end of a the 50 year unbeaten home record in Europe and we lost it to Fenerbahce… who were absolutely shite and could barely believe their luck. United were on a shocking run at the time (we’d just lost 5-0 at Newcastle and 6-3 at Southampton) but there’s no way we should have lost this game – it just seemed so careless. A 50 year unbeaten home record surrendered to Fenerbahce of all people. Barcelona, Real Madrid, Juve, Milan, Ajax… that would be understandable – not like losing to this rabble. Big sulk after this one.

Borussia Dortmund (H) Champs League SF – (0-1) April 1997

Having scraped through the group stages following Eric and Schmeichels’ masterclass in Vienna and then battered Porto… arguably the best team left in the tournament other than Juventus – only Dortmund stood between United and a place in the final. It really looked like it was on too, especially after coming away from the 1st leg in Germany unlucky to have suffered a single goal defeat. The overriding (admittedly naive) feeling was they were very beatable and would crumble under pressure at OT. Sadly, as we were to experience numerous times in subsequent years, it’s rarely that simple. Despite battering Dortmund and creating countless chances, they scored early and somehow kept United at bay. What’s worse, the then imperious Juventus suffered a rare off-day in the final and the unfancied Germans beat them easily.

Manchester City (H) – (1-2) February 2008

The 50th anniversary of Munich game, an occasion everyone connected with the club had been looking forward to for months. An opportunity to provide a fitting tribute to those who lost their lives in the crash, given even more of an emotional charge due to the fact City would be providing the opposition. It was sure to be a day to remember and as anticipated, there was one team that seemed overcome with the sense of occasion that day. Unfortunately it was United.

Manchester City (H) – (1-6) October 2011

I saw what was happening here and fled the scene with 10 minutes to go, just after Fletcher had made it 3-1. Unfortunately it soon got worse. Much worse. After getting out of a cab on Deansgate, a mate and I took refuge in the Cornerhouse bar as it seemed the safest bet not to contain anything or anybody football-related. We then drank in abject silence whilst I mentally debated the best way of getting home without seeing any blues – a tricky prospect when you live in Stockport. An absolutely sickening day, but still doesn’t compare with what we’d experience at the end of the season.

Sunderland (A) – (1-0) May 2012

Or more to the point, Manchester City vs Queens Park Rangers (3-2) May 2012. The most recent and still the most painful. I honestly don’t think I’ll ever get over the gut-wrenching feeling of that last 5 minutes. Ever. Not being dramatic, either – I genuinely mean it. As much as anything it’s the knowledge we were *that* close to inflicting on them something that would have eclipsed all the previous cock-ups that have littered their history – them losing the league from that position would have topped the lot. They had scarves printed already, out on sale in the open on Market Street the week previously. How wonderful would it have been to have got hold of one of them? The fuckers would have never lived it down. There’s all that, plus the certain knowledge that no matter how long we carry on ‘doing’ football, we’ll never be able to inflict the same amount of pain on them. Sorry, but it’s true.

Bastards.

www.rednews.co.uk

Another Day In Paradise

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If ever there was a day in the football calendar that sums up the cornucopia of cuntery the game has become, it has to be transfer deadline day. The summer window now culminates in a 24 hour festival of idiocy that has become something of a mainstay in popular culture – a bit like Glastonbury or Henman Hill at Wimbledon – in that it provides an opportunity for social inadequates to mug for the camera like total twats and get on telly if they so desire.

Since the signing of Berbatov in 2008, United have been mercifully quiet on the last day of each transfer window – instead it’s been left to the likes of Peter Odemwinge and Harry Redknapp to provide the gags for SSN’s last day banterthon. Not this year, unfortunately. United’s fruitless pursuit of Cesc Fabregas and cack-handed dealings with Everton led to a situation where we started the last day with a wad of money in our pocket and a faint whiff of desperation surrounding us. Since we’d spent the previous 5 years in pursuit of ‘value’ in the transfer market, it didn’t take a genius to work out we weren’t going to find it on this occasion either.

The worst part of the day was the realisation that due to it being the last day of the summer holidays, I was set to be at home all day on childcare duties. The child in question made it very clear that he was intent on spending the day trying to give himself a seizure by playing his PS3 for 15 hours straight – my only task would be to provide regular refreshments. It therefore became crushingly inevitable I was going to spend the best part of that 15 hours watching Sky, refreshing various live transfer blogs, checking twitter and generally hating myself for being so weak-minded as to be actually bothered about this shit.

I’d had the mental strength to avoid it in previous years, but that was achieved with the knowledge that nothing of any relevance was likely to happen. This year though, knowing that in all likelihood something would happen… I just got sucked into it like every other moron. I wasn’t watching with the expectation something wonderful was going to occur, as the day progressed it was more a case peering through my fingers and wondering ‘how much more of a fuck up can we make of this?’

Firstly, let’s consider what we did achieve. Marouane Fellaini – United’s first afro-bonced midfielder since the days of Remi Moses – who arrived for the princely sum of £27.5M… only £4M more than his reputed buyout clause at the end of July. In any other industry such a cock up might lead to someone losing their job or at least some sort of explanation given to stakeholders – in football, however, such ineptitude is merely par for the course. £4M is only £3M less than the figure Bebe cost, after all… and from the evidence seen so far, United should easily hope to recoup that figure once they appoint an official wig partner.

Yes, the wig thing. Deary fucking me, as if things weren’t bad enough. In the words of one swag seller, “wigs are the new Green & Gold.” The Palace home game provided all the evidence you needed… hundreds of the fuckers. There was one cretinous individual you might have spotted sat on the front row near where Boylie sits wearing one of these things. Every time the ball went out of touch he stood up and started doing a stupid dance, waving his arms around, presumably hoping the cameras would pick him out and he’d make the ‘look at this zany prick’ spot on Soccer AM. Almost unbelievably, his girlfriend (or carer) sat next to him didn’t appear to be embarrassed by this at all. I genuinely hope the pair of them got hit by a bus on the way home.

Fellaini wasn’t the real story of deadline day, of course. Despite the last minute scramble that took place, United had been courting him all summer and the end result was one of the least surprising signings in recent memory. The real intrigue on Sad Bastard Monday stemmed from our interest in Ander Herrera from Athletico Bilbao, a name that had Spanish football sages getting all giddy whilst the rest of us merely shrugged – perhaps underwhelmed by his disappointingly orthodox hairstyle.

Sky were quick to confirm that Herrera was quality with a capital ‘Q’. He had to be because he had scored a goal against Barcelona, a clip I would estimate they showed in excess of 200 times in the space of 6 hours. Also, it looked like it was very much on because sun-dried Joe Mangel lookalike and ‘Sky Sport’s Resident Spanish Football Expert’ Guillem Balagué said it was.

Quite why Balagué has the reputation as an expert in football is one of the great mysteries of the modern game. I don’t follow the bloke that closely or anything but his name has surely become synonymous with inaccuracy and incorrect information. Has he ever got anything right? The minute the words ‘Balagué says…’ or ‘Balagué reckons…’ are uttered should be confirmation that whatever follows probably isn’t going to happen. I’ve not checked this, but it would not come as a surprise to learn that Spanish dictionaries actually contain the verb ‘Balagué’ – which roughly translated into English means ‘to get something wrong’.

As time ticked on, the Herrera deal began to resemble a low budget Almodóvar farce. By far the greatest moment of the day (by now evening) was the revelation that the trio of lawyers attempting to finalise the deal on behalf of United were actually nothing of the sort. Disappointingly it turned out they actually were lawyers – indeed they were identified as representatives of the very reputable Spanish firm Laffer who’d helped broker Javi Martinez’s protracted move to Bayern a year previously – it just wasn’t clear exactly who they were attempting to represent in this instance.

A couple of weeks later this still hasn’t been cleared up. United have gone on record stating that Laffer weren’t representing the club and indeed, weren’t even known to them. Laffer meanwhile have been quoted in the Spanish media clearly stating their position – that they were not representing the player. Likewise, Herrera himself has confirmed that he had instructed no lawyers to push through the deal and was merely waiting to see if the clubs reached agreement. To me, this still doesn’t tie up sufficiently – who were Laffer there on behalf of in that case? With such contradictory denials from all parties on record, why have neither United or Laffer (both facing some ridicule and with reputations on the line) opted to challenge what the other is saying?

Should we even care? Probably not when hot on the heels of the Mister Potato and Kansai Paints captures, we can bask in the knowledge that Ed and Dickie have finally secured the club’s first official nutritional supplements partner in Japan. Welcome Manda Fermentation Company Ltd! That AND a midfielder in the same month. We are truly blessed.

Copyright Red News – September 2013

www.rednews.co.uk

Waiting For The Man

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So it began, the David Moyes era. He slipped into Carrington (sorry, the AON Training Complex) on July 1st wearing a nervous smile and a shiny grey suit that looked more M&S than Saville Row. Fitting perhaps, as unlike the two Iberian candidates this appointment was the board’s attempt to source an off-the-peg replacement for Fergie. Moyes is undoubtedly the safe choice: low on stardust but more crucially, low on potential flounces and histrionics too.

Fergie’s parting broadside at Wayne Rooney presented DM with his first major issue before he’d even started the job. I’m still trying to work out now what the sense was in making the alleged ‘transfer request’ public, surely it would have strengthened the club’s bargaining position if the details of this had been kept private? What Fergie definitely achieved though, was placing Moyes under pressure from the start and kickstarting a story that has followed him round like a bad smell all summer. ‘What’s the story about Wayne, Dave?’, ‘Tell us about Wayne, Dave?’, ‘Have you had a chat with Wayne, Dave?’, ‘Dave, Dave, Daaaaave?’ It must be driving him fucking daft.

Throughout the club, this his been a summer of BIG CHANGES. Fergie was barely on his ferry floating round Scotland (worst summer holiday ever), before Ed Woodward and Dickie Arnold (Niles Crane and Billy Bunter) joined Moyes at the helm ready to steer us through the murky, uncertain waters of the post-Wizard era. They signalled their intent by doing something which should have been done 3 years ago – they signed a world-class central midfielder. Ha! Of course they didn’t, but they did manage to open a Twitter account.

Yes, the winds of change were howling through Old Trafford this summer. Not only did the club embrace Twitter, they also opened an Instagram account and then signed up with Google+ – sensational developments, a communication revolution that heralded our nascent steps in this scary new era. Fergie might not have approved of witchcraft like the internet and signing midfielders – but he was gone and these new guys clearly weren’t phased by such prospects. So with our social media portfolio in place, new signings were surely an absolute certainty? Ronaldo, Thiago, Fabregas, Modric, Leon Osman… the possibilities were endless.

Before the signings commenced, first it was time for the ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL MAN U MEGASUMMER ROADSHOW which this year saw us schlepp round Australia and Asia for several months. What can I say? Taking in 50 billion miles and playing to 50 billion spectators, it was an enormous success that provided idyllic preparations for the squad ahead of another demanding season. Something like that, anyway.

Ed fled the tour, hotfooting it back to the UK to stalk Cesc Fabregas aka ‘urgent transfer business’ (which we knew due to the sudden open season approach to communications, with press briefings now occurring on an hourly basis) so it was left for Dickie to do the talking in his absence. It was cringeworthy stuff. “Our description is the heartbeat of Manchester, the pulse is all over the world”, “I stand on the shoulders of giants. We are every bit as much of a team off the pitch as we are on it.” Then there’s this corker of a quote which needs to be considered in its entirety to be fully appreciated…

“David (Gill) has been preparing both myself and Ed in quite some detail about the way it all works. Ed has been particularly well briefed about the operations of how we transact with players, both the fantastic ones we already have and if there is an opportunity to buy. As befits a man of his nature, David did a fantastic job in the nurturing he has given us, the preparation and the handover. Laying the flight path to the runway is all about preparation. Everyone is well aware of the change. But from the inside, in the context of having to make the change, it has been fantastically well done.”

“Fantastic” indeed. I make that rhetoric, arse-kissing, self-reverence, backslapping, a customary metaphor AND an acute case of premature congratulation. Impressive stuff – it’s no wonder the commercial departments of all these sponsors, sorry ‘global partners’ we’ve recently accumulated gravitate towards Arnold… he talks like a man with a PhD in corporate bullshit.

In fairness to Dickie, if his job is to maximise commercial revenue he appears to be an absolute master of his trade. This summer the club have racked up another 5 commercial deals taking the number of official sponsors to a mind-boggling 33. Kansai Paint are the club’s official paint partner. It’s mental when you think about it – an official paint partner. Do they contact us or do we contact them with such a proposal? “Hello, Manchester United here…just wondered if you’d like to give us a load of money and samples and we’ll say we’re errrrr… paint partners? You do?! Fantastic. Just wire the money through and we’ll sort you a picture of Kagawa holding up two tins of emulsion. Sorted then, cheers.”

At last everyone arrived home before immediately jetting off again for a quick friendly in Stockholm – a throwback to the days when United undertook a tour of Scandinavia every summer. Those tours seemed quite exotic back then, especially considering City never travelled any further than the Isle of Man tournament. Then came Wembley for the Charity Shield, a chance for early season silverware and to check out the new signings we’d been *that* close to bringing in for several weeks. We won the trophy of course, but the new faces were strangely absent – probably just a delay with the paperwork I expect.

So after a summer of stalking, sulking and waiting patiently it was finally time to kick-off at Swansea, with the club’s sideline business of winning football matches thankfully restored to the top of the agenda. Moyes got his debut win – important given the nightmare start he’s been dealt fixture-wise. Anything less than 3 points and the pressure would have been piled on ahead of today’s (Chelsea) game. Other observations? Reds in fine voice, midfield deficiencies not addressed, Giggs still starting, Rooney sat on the fringes looking mightily pissed off and Robin Van Persie absolutely brilliant.

New era? Doesn’t appear much has changed in truth.

carlosartorial

Man United and other bits and pieces

Tag Archives: manchester

Demon Days

Another Day In Paradise

Waiting For The Man

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