Tag: Rafael

A Shower of berks – Man United V West Ham United January 16th 2013 FA Cup

A freezing cold night, a shite atmosphere and Old Trafford being stewarded by people that our visitors tonight would colloquially call a shower of “berks”. As much as nights like the one we all had at Stamford Bridge three months ago emphasise the privilege it is to be a red, nights like tonight are as much bad as that night was good. The irony is that United lost that night at Stamford Bridge but we all came home jubilant having taken the piss out them frauds that pollute that stadium. Tonight, United won but never has the old pun, “cold Trafford” been more appropriate. I sometimes read the K stand top left section in UWS fanzine and wonder if I’m living in a parallel universe to the fella writing it. The self mythologysing K Stand were silent for almost the entire match, outshouted by roughly 1600 traveling West Ham fans but worse were the fuckin’ stewards. Whilst the West Ham fans were stood up for almost the entire match (no skin off my nose, just as long as they don’t cut our allocation there for the same reason), Three lads just behind me in the B stand walked out after being mithered by a steward when trying to get an atmosphere going. My guess is that they probably went to the Bishops, which they might as well have been all night for the contribution they were ALLOWED to make to the atmosphere. There was another fella in the K stand in a white coat who was kicked out of the ground for the same reason. I’ve seen uprising in our proud old stadium before against these goons. The first time I saw it was the J stand in the summer of 1991 when them busy bastards that Michael “Ned” Kelly employed got a good slapping when they tried kicking out reds making an atmosphere during a match against Luton Town. Maybe Old Trafford has been stealthily neutered over the years, as a lot of people believe but I know of enough rum lads who still regularly go for that idea to be rubbish. The problem is, they’re all scattered around the stadium. The idea that was mooted last season about a singing section, where lads can gather together in a prominent part of the stadium, can’t come to fruition quickly enough in my eyes.

Goalscoring return: Wayne Rooney slid Javier Hernandez's cross into the net early on

A returning Wayne Rooney scores the winning goal on eight minutes after brilliant work by Anderson

Continue reading A Shower of berks – Man United V West Ham United January 16th 2013 FA Cup

In A Backdrop Of Hot Air And Blue Smoke – Manchester, 9th Of December 2012

Things have changed at City. As Daniel Taylor from The Guardian pointed out, time was “when you might bump into Curly Watts or Eddie Large at Man City games. Tom Cruise is here today”. It was one of them days, I saw the Riot squad tearing down Every Street at 12.50 when all seemed quiet. Later on after the match, a prominent member of Uniteds firm was seen embracing a GMP football intelligence officer on Ashton New Road in a scene which had me thinking of the 1914 Christmas day truce in the Somme..

 

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In the cold light of day – Norwich City V Manchester United, November 17th 2012

I could be all philosophical about this. In the cold light of day, we are (give or take) a third of the way through the season and two points off the leaders, having beaten both Liverpool and Chelsea away and Arsenal at home. All said though, after this performance, pragmatic philosophy is of no comfort. I was convinced before the season kicked off that Chelsea and Arsenal were all talk and the title race was between United and City. The results today haven’t changed anything; Chelsea won’t win the title and unless United do something dramatic in January, say bring Roy Keane out of retirement or something akin, then this title race is City’s to lose. Man City, who have been having a post title winning hangover that we ourselves experienced in 1999 are, for all that, still unbeaten in the league. United have lost three times this season and for two and half of those matches, United’s performances have been a disgrace.

 

 

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Long, Cold And Dark November Nights – Manchester, 19th Of November 2011

Two long, long weeks of of no club football but a couple of international friendlies for England, a storm over poppies, Sepp Blatters blarney and an embargo on transfers ’til January mean newspaper journalist get ever more desparate to fill their pages. The day after United beat Sunderland, a frenzy was brewing up over FIFA’s refusal to allow England players to wear poppies on their shirts for the forthcoming friendly against Spain. Amongst the usual knee jerk reaction of political correctness gone mad and such forth (waddya mean you’d forgotten about it ??). Exactly six years to the day before England played Spain, England played against Argentina without wearing poppies, there was no clamour for the team to wear poppies, can anybody tell me what’s changed in the last six years ? By sheer coincidence, prior to the poppy furore, England skipper John Terry, had been accused of racially abusing Queens Park Rangers centre half Anton Ferdinand. This allegation had taken up a lot of column inches in the national press and the FA, with admirable common sense had decided to adopt an innocent ’til proven guilty stance. I wonder why they didn’t take that stance with Johnathan Woodgate and Lee Bowyer in 2001 or with Rio Ferdinand in 2003? The problem the FA have with the John Terry allegation is that, like badly pasted wallpaper, the bubble gets pressed down, only to resurface, just as bad, pretty close by. Still the poppy fury sold a few papers, got an awful lot of people wound up about something they’d forget about a week later and ended up with the farcical gesture of players having poppies painted on their boots to circumnavigate a ban that had never existed in the first place.

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