Righteously Wronged And The Ignoble Noble – Manchester 22nd of December 2013

It’s not been a bad week. After last Sunday’s stroll in Villa Park, United qualified for the League cup semi-final via a potentially tricky away match at Stoke City. With an almost biblical downpour of hailstones, referee Mark Clattenburg took both teams off the pitch on 30 minutes. That sagacious analyst on SKY Sports, Alan ‘your nose is offside’ Smith, was complaining about it being health and safety gone mad. Smith, a product of the mythical old school where men were men and all that bollocks, would have been the first onto Clattenburg’s back if a player had acquired a serious injury due to the prevailing elements. Another great one from Smith was when he proclaimed early in the game that you could always guarantee a great atmosphere at Stoke. This was when the only noise that could be heard was the 5,000 United fans singing the Twelve Days of Cantona. Stoke fans, apart from their riposte (sic) of ‘shit’ everytime a chant of ‘United’ went up, couldn’t be heard by a dog. Continue reading Righteously Wronged And The Ignoble Noble – Manchester 22nd of December 2013

Burst The bubbles – East London 5th of January 2013

Gutted, absolutely gutted, were the West Ham fans in the Priory Road/East Stand at the Boleyn Ground when Robin Van Persie equalised just into injury time yesterday. It was a very pleasing sight after all the gloating that had been going on in the previous twenty minutes. The noise from the West Ham fans, in anticipation of victory was reaching a level of crescendo until Van Persie burst the bubbles. The sudden heartbroken silence was a joy to behold followed by the sheer terror in the ranks of the ‘appy ammas’ (sic) as they suddenly realised there was going to be a siege on their goal for the last two minutes. When Van Persie equalised, the result of a truly brilliant crossfield switch pass from Ryan Giggs, I could see United getting a winner. That United didn’t was down to two dreadful finishes, one from Shinji Kagawa and the other from Antonio Valencia seconds before referee Martin Atkinson blew the final whistle.

Continue reading Burst The bubbles – East London 5th of January 2013