Mud, Sweat and Beers

Because I'm a pathetic specimen of a human being, I really enjoy watching The Big Match Revisited on ITV4 (or, given the normally show it about 9am on Saturday, I record it first). Currently, they're working through the 1978/79 season and it's never less than amusing to spot the vast changes we've seen in English football over the last 30 years.

For one thing, they show plenty of games from outside the top flight, which I believe was part of the contract fromt he Football League - Match of the Day on the BBC used to do the same. This means you get to see clashes like Brentford against Watford in the Third Division, where the young Luther Blissett, in the days before he was inspiring Italian anarchists, maintaining dignity (and scoring a goal) while taking sickening abuse from the crowd. Top man.

Of which reminds us of the old cliché about black players - that they were soft and couldn't handle the rough stuff. To which you can only wonder if they ever saw Cyrille Regis play? The man was built like a tank and was capable of battering his way past the overweight carthorse centre halves that most teams employed back then.

"Overweight" is certainly a theme you get from watching players back then, as plenty of the lads showing off their stuff may have wished the shirts had a little more "give", judging by the ample bellies on display. If you think Sam Alladyce has only looked that chunky since he packed in playing, think again. After all, a victory celebration of about ten pints of beer was the norm back then. Though for the losing team, commiseration could come in the form of ten pints of beer.

Luckily, the pitches of the time pretty much prohibited any kind of quick movement, with that vital ingredient of "grass" often being left out of the mix, leaving the surface looking either like Ypres 1917 or Southport beach. Though running fast wasn't an option, neither was standing still, lest you be sucked into the quagmire like in some dodgy horror film - and nobody was going to be able to pull the likes of Larry Lloyd and Mickey Droy back out, that's for sure. It makes you watch in awe that the likes of Steve Coppell and Laurie Cunningham could glide on the mud like it was a bowling green.

Viv Anderson runs with the ball, probably to prevent the onset of trenchfoot

Watching old football games can also provide a nice little sociological insight in normal life at the time. The pitchside adverts are for the likes of Visionhire - the idea of people renting a TV may seem a bit alien to people these days, but it was the norm back then. I can remember my mother paying the subs for her parents in town back in the day. Eh ba gum.

And of course, through it all, there's the magnificent Brian Moore, whose head did indeed look uncannily like the London Planetarium. The only downside is watching it in the knowledge Liverpool end up as champions! Bah!

Every Single One Of Us...

If anything was going to shift me out of my blogging apathy, it would be the retirement of the one man outside my family who has been responsible for a great deal of joy in my life.

I was five years old when Alex Ferguson jaunted down from Aberdeen to take the job of returning Manchester United to the top of English football. Anyone who knows their football history knows it wasn't easy, and there were times most of us would have happily seen him booted back to Glasgow, but in 1993 he delivered what we all wanted, and the prize of being Champions of England was ours again. Sir Matt Busby went to his grave a few months later knowing his legacy was safe.

From then on, there have been few seasons that hasn't seen some silverware brought back to Manchester, and we've even got our hands on the top European prize a couple of times. It's been one hell of a ride, with a huge cast of players passing through. He once said his greatest achievement was "knocking Liverpool off their fucking perch" - you can argue how much of that they did themselves, but the simple fact is that Ferguson nearly tripled our number of English titles. In the early 90s, such a statistic seemed the stuff of a madman's dreams. Yet here we here, from constant underachievers to the most successful team in England over the course of one man's spell in a job.

His replacement? I remain to be convinced if David Moyes is the man for the job. I hope he is, for obvious reasons, but it's going to be beyond weird at the start of next season when another man is sitting in Fergie's seat on the bench.

Football in the Family

As I've written before, football has changed to an incredible degree over the past decades. Players are paid more, top level grounds are of much better quality for players and spectators and just about every professional game in England is filmed for posterity. Often, the past is made to look overly romantic by people who weren't there, much like many aspects of life.

Journalist and broadcaster Gary Imlach's My Father and Other Working Class Football Heroes is a book I really should have read a long, long time ago. The central thread seems to be one of regret of a son not asking his dad more questions when they had the chance, and a mission to fill in the blanks of his own knowledge of the old boy's life, but there's also plenty on the realities of being a footballer in the post-war era.

Stewart Imlach was a genuine football star of the late 1950s, playing for Scotland at the 1958 World Cup and starring for Nottingham Forest when they won the 1959 FA Cup. A long way from his roots in a Scottish fishing village, the kind of place everyone leaves, not moves to. A star in youth football, he was picked up by Bury, quickly making a name as a quick left winger. Becoming a much watched player, he's soon on his way to Derby County, a move which doesn't work out, and he's passed onto Forest, where he plays his part in the their last shot of glory before the Clough years.

In that game, he was considered by most witnesses, including the legendary Stanley Matthews, to be the Man of the Match. He was a hero at the top of his game playing for a team with the potential to win further honours. However, football being as it was at the time, within a matter of years, he has dropped down two divisions through various managers' whims. At Coventry City, he is sold on by the man who did more for players' rights than just about anyone - Jimmy Hill. The author manages to interview the man, and is initially shocked when he can't remember the exact details of why he didn't want his dad - only to reflect that Hill would have dealt with hundreds of footballers over his long career.

Where the book succeeds best is showing the life the players had: Imlach Snr spent his summers doing various joinery jobs to bring in extra cash, he first finds out about his transfer by reading it in the local paper and there's the fact that Scottish players lost out financially from being in the squad that went to the World Cup. There's also vindictive managers and those that run the game treating players as little more than serfs due to the "Retain and Transfer" system that they were so reluctant to scrap, despite it turning out to be infringing on players' rights as workers.

Towards the end of the book, Gary Imlach works on trying to get his father awarded an actual "cap" from the Scottish FA: at the time, they were only given to players who played in a "Home" international against England, Wales or Northern Ireland. Even in the modern era, the authorities remain obstructive and inept. An English company makes him a replica instead, much to the old player's pride. That the Scottish FA should behave in such a way towards a man who represented his country with honour comes across as contemptible.

My Father and Other Working Class Football Heroes works excellently as a biography and a general football book - essential reading for fans of the game.

Breaking Up Is Hard To Do

It's "bye bye" to Manchester for Dimitar Berbatov, then. Never has there been a player I can remember at United who polarised opinion to such a level between thinking he was a genius or complete shite.

Even Juan Veron, whose career with us was patchy at best, was generally regarded as a brilliant player who just couldn't hack it in English football. Poor Dimi never had that excuse - after all, he'd done well for Tottenham Hotspur before his £30 million transfer four years ago. Since then, he won two championships and was top scorer in 2010/11 and yet last year, he was a stranger to the first team with only a short spell around Christmas (six goals in three games) to take from it. He had a nightmare up at Newcastle, but then so did everybody - yet the Berb was the only one to get the axe.

Perhaps he should have left last summer. Despite the Golden Boot, his being left out of the entire squad for the Champions League final against Barcelona was nothing short of humiliation - especially when you consider even Michael Owen got a space on the bench ahead of him. However, he kept his silence throughout it all and it's only now, since his transfer to Fulham last week, that he's voiced his disappointment and a feeling that he's lost some respect for his manager.

Fair enough, says I. But then I would, as I was always a fan. He was a player who could do things that made you gasp, had sublime skill and that cool thing of being able to beat a man despite having no pace whatsoever. He's probably the type I'd like to have been, if I had been good enough to play.

The real puzzler for me, that said, is why we bought him in the first place. At the time, we were English and European champions down to in large part the front three of Wayne Rooney, Carlos Tevez and Cristiano Ronaldo - a trio whose speed and ability to switch positions had caused all manner of problems for the best around.

My only guess would be Ferguson knew Ronaldo wanted away to Madrid and also that there would be problems with Tevez and his agent. Perhaps the whole system was set to change. What we do know is that in the season after those two stars left, Berb made two fatal misses against Blackburn and Manchester City that many believe (with some cause) cost us the league and FA Cup.

Which will explain why in the future, a man who scored a hat-trick past Liverpool won't go down in legend. I always wanted him to succeed. People said he only scored against the teams we beat easily, like five against Blackburn, hat-tricks against Wigan and Birmingham. Perhaps so, but given we lost the league on goal difference last season, maybe, just maybe, he could have found a few more goals against West Brom, QPR, Norwich...?

It wasn't to be for him here, though I'll always count myself lucky to have been in the crowd when he pulled off an incredible bit of skill against West Ham to set up a Ronaldo goal soon after joining. Good luck at Fulham, Dimi, and know that now you're gone, we're back to being a squad of right ugly bastards again.

A New Hope

And…. It’s back again. Those with no inclination towards the game will say “it’s never been away!” but the new English football season is now underway.

The days before kick off are truly the golden time for all fans. No matter that the previous season finished with relegation, getting knocked out of the cup by the local pub team and the entire back four being sold to your local rivals for a box of pies, there’s always a spark of optimism that new season equals new hope.

Because while the Olympics were great, it’s all a bit too nice, isn’t it? Media pundits may bleat on about how recent months have shown us such concepts as “honour” and “respect”, there’s not too much fun in that. When Jessica Ennis was working her socks off, the crowd weren’t questioning the parentage of her rivals, which is all good and well, but it doesn’t provide much in the way of cheap laughs . In a football ground, you can quite happily get away with singing about how you all hate an entire team's fanbase and it's kind of acceptable, nay encouraged.

Heading to the ground in the sun, buying the match programme to read the manager giving it the “if we all pull together in the same direction, put in the hard work and have the backing of the fans, there’s no reason we can’t succeed”. Perhaps a profile of the hot-shot new striker with the stupid haircut and shite tattoos stating his ambition of “becoming a legend”.

It’s good to feel the old routines again. Going to the pub beforehand, meeting with people you haven’t seen since May, speculating on who’ll get in the team. Make libellous comments about the club owners for not coughing up some money. Then there's the old familiar buzz of walking up the road and seeing the ground emerge from amongst the houses. Well, unless you have to go to one of those wretched lego-kit stadiums miles outside the town that the likes of Stoke play in. Yuck.

It doesn’t matter if you’re following Man United or Macclesfield, that sense of possibility is there. For a little while, at least, as all it takes is a dodgy back-pass in the first minute that’s cut out by the other team’s swarthy number nine to score for the sense of "here we go again" to sink in. Then again, there’s always next year, right?

Outside the Top

When pundits and hacks bemoan "spoilt, overpaid footballers", it's easy to forget that most of the lads out there playing the game for a living aren't like Wayne Rooney, earning £100,000+ a week, living in a mansion and shagging call girls at any opportunity.

One of these was Chris Hargreaves, a man whose career over 20 years never made the top flight. Instead, he went from his hometown club Grimsby Town to Torquay United via Hull City, Hereford United, Plymouth   Argyle, Northampton Town, Brentford and Oxford United. Never staying at one club for too long, his story is that of the perennial journeyman footballer.

A tale of which we can read about, as Chris has put his story down in Where's Your Caravan?, an entertaining tale of life in the lower rungs of English pro football. In an interesting approach, he tells his tale inbetween descriptions of his life at the time of writing: recently retired, he's worried about providing for his family, like any other Joe on the street.

It appears that Hargreaves didn't employ a ghost writer for this, doing it totally on his own steam. It's an admirable approach, and to his credit, he's not too shabby. Though there's plenty of "to be fair to him" and "credit to him" peppering the pages, as well as plenty of periods where it seems every other paragraph ends with a "!", the prose flows very well.

However, I do have gripes that could have been avoided with a decent editor. Some basic errors such as confusing Oxford United and City and the years Manchester United won the Champions League should have been spotted, and the bits where Chris turns a little bit "Sun Reader" don't fit well with this reader. I also wonder if Mrs Hargreaves was given a copy of the manuscript before it went to press.

But all is made up with his honesty of life as a footballer, and Hargreaves is nothing but upfront with his own failings, admitting he may have partied a bit too hard in his younger days, and that some bad decisions effectively ended his chances of making the top flight.

Where the book works best is the periods where our narrator is uncertain of his future - especially once he gets past 30 - and there's the constant worry of getting a new contract - it's a life shared by many others and it's not surprising to read of many of Hargreaves' teammates who are absolutely disillusioned with the game. One, Paul McGregor, gives up football in the belief he'd have a better time being in a band.

As a footballer's autobiography, Hargreaves deserves praise for making a much better read than the likes of Rooney or Gerrard would ever knock together. He's a bit of a lad too much a times, but also has a nice line in self-deprecation. Best of all, he doesn't hold back on slagging off those he feels wronged him in the past: as a youngster on trial with Everton in the mid 1980s, he gets revenge on Adrian Heath and Pat van den Hauwe for acting up.

Certainly, he manages to give an insight into being a footballer that is just earning a living. For that, it's a decent read for anyone with an interest in the game.

Euromen Cometh

Much to my joy, the European Championships start tomorrow. I do love a good tournament, especially in this instance where all the games are on in the evening after I finish work - with luck, I shouldn't miss a single game.

I've always preferred the Euros to the World Cup, too. Sure, the latter is considered the apex of achievement for a footballer, but there can often be some games involving some pretty crap teams, even if the antics of New Zealand two years ago showed the gap isn't that far these days. But the Euros rarely have filler teams that never stand a chance of winning a game: Ireland may be considered the weakest team out of the 16, and even they have proven international quality players like Shay Given and Robbie Keane, as well as being led by one of the most respected coaches in the game.

Plus you get the occasional huge shock winner, like Denmark in 1992 and Greece in 2004. Alright, so the Greek team played in a style so mind-numbingly negative it would have made George Graham proud, but you take your surprises where you can get them in football and a team who had never been a real threat at that level before suddenly being champions of Europe on the back of sheer willpower and organisation made for a decent story.

If I had to back a team, though, I'd have to plump for the Germans. They looked very strong in qualifying and you can generally rely on them to be amongst the chasers. Given my own brief flirtation with the England national team ended when Graham Taylor dropped Chris Waddle and Peter Beardsley, then gave more caps to Carlton Palmer than Matt Le Tissier, I won't be giving much backing to them. Indeed, I'll be surprised if they escape from the group stage.

Mind, even if they do, they'll probably have to face either Spain or Italy in the next round. Given those teams have won the last World Cups, it again shows the level of competition in the tournament.

What I will be hoping for is that the lunkheads that the BBC reported on the other week are kept well under the cosh by the local authorities. The idea of a footballer being the target of racist abuse at such an event in the 21st century is grotesque. Cliché and trite as it may sound, but football is the Beautiful Game and groups of extremist bell-ends should be kept out by all means necessary. Call your centre-half a useless bag of shite when he punts one into his own net - fine - but bringing such irrelevant details as his skin colour into it is just a sign of idiocy and a lack of intelligence in being unable to think of a decent insult. UEFA have made noises about taking a hard line if such abuse is heard - I can only hope they follow through with it if need be.

The main concern for me on a personal level, however, is that with so much footy on TV over a short space of time, the amount of beer and crisps I might get through may ensure I'll soon have a belly big enough to rest my pint glass on...

Roy of the Rovers

Well, when I'm wrong I'll be the first to hold my hands up. Honest Harry Redknapp didn't get the gig, and instead Roy Hodgson is the new England manager.

Roy Boy actually seems like a decent choice: rumour is that Trevor Brooking - one of the four man panel that made the choice - has a long-standing grudge against Redknapp after he replaced his good mate Billy Bonds as West Ham manager. Harry probably didn't do himself any favours in his recent time up before the beak where he essentially made himself out to be a functioning illiterate by way of a defence.

You have to hope, for his sake, that Hodgson's "nice guy" image is a mask and he has the guts to totally dissemble an underachieving squad wholesale. One journalist has remarked that the players will just laugh at the new manager - if that was true, then he should just sack off the offending overpaid dicks and bring in others who are willing to listen and learn.

Certain quarters of the press, of course, have put the boot in. Daniel Taylor on the Guardian - who I thought knew better - has done this and even stated the FA needs to answer questions on why they ignored 'Arry. Like bollocks they do - the FA are not the local council and can essentially do as they please. In any case, Redknapp's main quality has always been his ability to wheel and deal in the transfer market, buying the right player at the right time. This isn't something that carries over to the international scene.

What the FA are banking on, I think, is Roy Hodgson being able to get involved in every level of the England scene - the kind of work Redknapp doesn't strike me as being interested in, much like Fabio Cappello. Conversely, Hodgson is known for his interest in tactics and training, and I reckon he'd put the time into organising youth teams and the like.

You'd like to think the press will give the new man a fair shout - but it's not very likely. While Bobby Robson managed to survive not only a dismal showing at the 1988 European Championships and not qualifying at all for the same tournament in 1984 before managing England to their best showing since winning the World Cup, it's unlikely anyone will show Hodgson the same patience. Good luck to him, he's going to need it. Bet West Brom fans are gutted, though.

True Romance of the Cup

It’ll have come to no surprise to anyone that the Football Association has managed to completely screw over Liverpool fans ahead of this year’s FA Cup final. It’s merely another symptom of the level of fuckwittery of the people running the best sport in the world.

To whit: the final, by tradition, is held on a Saturday, kicking off at 3pm. They already messed about a bit last year by having a full league schedule on the same day, meaning a lot of people wouldn't have had the chance to watch such a big game due to being at their own team’s game. Now, this year they've decided to hold the game in the early evening. Unfortunately for Liverpool fans, this means that by the time the game finishes, they’ll have long missed the last train back North, due to engineering works that have been scheduled for the last 18 months. Naturally, the FA didn't bother to check this as the shift in time was important to things like “maximising viewer revenue streams” and “brand awareness in other markets”. The actual poor sods paying stupid money for a ticket don’t seem to have raised much interest.

The common myth is that Manchester United destroyed the integrity of the cup. In 1999, we flew off to Brazil to take part in the inaugural World Club Championship, withdrawing from the FA Cup due to fixture congestion. Pundits have long since perpetuated the myth that this moment above all meant nobody could take the oldest football competition in the world seriously anymore. Of course, it’s a line that ignores just about all the important factors.

(As it happens, I wasn't best pleased about it myself, thinking we should have just played a bunch of reserves against whoever we drew, and I was especially miffed when we subsequently embarrassed ourselves in the games. That the whole farce of a tournament was never repeated shows it was all a colossal waste of time.)

The FA, I suspect, are quite happy someone else is taking the flak for the fading of the glory of the cup. For it ignores their own series of decisions that have seen most fans see playing in it as a fairly low priority:

a) Let’s start with the fact they sold the name of it, so that commentators on TV have to refer to “The FA Cup, sponsored by Ann Summers' New Vibrator Range” or whoever has stumped up the cash this year.

b) Getting rid of semi-final replays. Alright, maybe I’m biased as a United fan, as we had some crackers of these in 1985, 1990 and 1999.

c) And on the topic of semi-finals, deciding to play them at fucking Wembley. It’s been said many times by many people, but it somewhat obviously removes any allure of playing in the final. We know why it’s been done (because the FA need to pay off the stupidly huge bill for building that pile-of-crap new Wembley stadium), but the fact last Saturday of having' tens of thousands of scousers having to get down to London to a early afternoon kick-off is absolute madness.

d) Finally, and more obviously, fucking around with the times of games to suit TV. Chelsea vs Tottenham on Sunday started at 6pm on a Sunday evening. What kind of time is that for a football game?

Not that the FA are unique in this kind of thing. In the past, the people running football were in for the power, the prestige (especially club owners) and the money (especially the authorities). These days, you suspect, they've got rid of the first two in that list. Football corruption in certain nations is rife, especially around a betting industry that is gaining more prominence, but is generally ignored by a complicit media. Andersred has written a superb article on how the powers-that-be in football refuse to do anything about the crucial issues concerning the game.

My own club has suffered from this attitude: I’m even aware that the people in charge of Manchester United probably don’t like me. When I go to a game, on average ten times a season, the most I spend is on my ticket and £3 on a programme. They’d much rather have some one-off tourist in the seat, who’ll visit the club shop and spend a fortune on souvenirs.

Football isn’t dead, even if the body is beginning to smell funny. The success of clubs like AFC Wimbledon shows that supporters can make things happen on their own terms. The rest of us may have to make do with casting envious glances to Germany, where supporters are treated with at least some degree of respect from their clubs.

Side Project

Against my better judgement, I've decided to start another blog. I've long wanted to write more about football, specifically Manchester United, but just wanted a decent angle to do so.

So, I've embarked on a mission to write short (around 500-1000 words) biographies on everyone who has played for the club in the time I can recall being a supporter - since the summer of 1988 - up to anyone who has played for us this season. I figure it could make for a half-decent history of the team over the last couple of decades.

I don't expect it to garner anything but the smallest of interest, or even care that much, as I'm doing it mainly for myself. Though one hope is that by the time it's finished, it'll be a superb tool in helping any United fan waste an afternoon at work.

I'm fully intending on continuing to work on The Tedious World, however. Any excuse to write random bits of crap and stick them on the internet has to be taken, after all.

For what it's worth, Some Redshirts Live Forever can be found here. I may sort out the crap layout at some point in the future.

Blunt Insight

It's been said by many before, including me, the standard of football pundits on the country's national broadcaster is absolute crap.

What's irked me this time is BBC favourite Mark Lawrenson. On Football Focus on Saturday lunchtime, he states 18-year-old Arsenal player Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain should be in England's squad for this summer's European Championships as you should take the form players. A fair enough stance.

However, fast forward a few hours to that night's Match of the Day and after we watch the Norwich City vs Everton clash, Gary Lineker asks young Mark about Norwich's striker Grant Holt, who is the second top scoring English player this season. He's a player who, despite being 30 and in his first season of top-flight football, is enjoying a good spell of form. Gary wonders whether Grant could make the Euros in a few months?

"No" is the empathetic answer. Try to work that one out, though the cynic in me would suggest that if Holt played for Lawrenson's beloved Liverpool - perhaps in place of Andy "Mr £30 million" Carroll - he'd be singing a different song.

But this is the quality of football punditry on the BBC these days. Alan Shearer may well have been one of the best strikers around in his 1990s heyday, but his TV work puts him on par with the guy from the Monty Python sketch who can only answer "I hit the ball, and it was in the back of the net!" to every question. Infamously, at the last World Cup, he admitted before (I think) the Algeria vs Slovenia game that he had no idea about any of the players.

Since then, he hasn't learned much and the most we tend to get from him is "from there, he really should be scoring" when someone - perhaps Andy "Mr £30 million" Carroll - misses a sitter from a yard out. Well, thanks, Alan, I never would have come to that conclusion myself. You're justifying the license fee all by yourself, there.

Now, despite the evils of Sky, you have to give them some due for how they approach things. Sure, they have Jamie "Literally" Redknapp on the books, but at least there's Graeme Souness sitting next to him with a look of total contempt etched across his Begbie-esque features.

Also, since this season, they've brought Gary Neville into the fold. Never the most popular player outside Manchester United fans (and he wasn't all that with a lot of us, either), he's taken to the role like a natural, helping the company after they had to bin those two dinosaurs Grey and Keys. While those two (and Lawrenson and Alan Hansen on BBC) were from a different era of football, Neville is only just retired and brings that insight into his work. Weirdly, even fans who despised the guy as a player have been impressed by his honesty, directness and punditry work.

ITV seem to have taken this cue and brought in Nev's former captain Roy Keane to add a bit of directness to their coverage to counter the personality vortex of Gareth Southgate. Like Neville, he's not scared of putting the boot into United when they deserve it - contrast with Alan Hansen saying he'll back Kenny Dalglish to the hilt, when it's clear to the rest of the world that Liverpool are sinking fast.

The BBC need to sort their football footage out - fast. As an anchor, Gary Lineker has the charisma of a breezeblock and their whole approach is far too cosy. If management were brave, they'd attempt to bring in some new blood before it all descends into the realms of parody last seen with Ron Manager on The Fast Show.

Oh, and for the record, I reckon Grant Holt should go the Euros, but probably only because he's a Cumbrian lad. Get Scott Carson in there too and it'll be a fine summer for the homeland.

Pitch Imperfect

"Tradition" is one of those words I've always viewed with some degree of suspicion. After all, it used to be traditional to stick an arrow at high velocity through the neck of any Scotsman who wandered South of Carlisle. Nowadays, thankfully, the Tartan Army are free to travel into a brave world of colour television, decent football and non-"Heavy" beer*.

Speaking of football, it also used to be traditional for the two teams playing in the FA Cup final to knock out a dodgy song apiece. My own team have been guilty of some horrors, especially when they tried to get clever and hire Pete Waterman on Move Move Move (Big Red Drum) in 1996. The fact Eric Cantona decided soon after that he'd had enough of football cannot be a coincidence. Throughout that decade, I can remember a few teams getting in celeb fans to beef up sales: for the ’97 final you had Suggs for Chelsea and Bob Mortimer for Middlesbrough. The latter did a cover of Chris Rea’s Let’s Dance, thereby exhausting the town's entire creative pool.

I could be wrong, but I think the pioneers for this kind of atrocity were Chas and Dave, always ready when their beloved Tottenham Hotspur made the final. In 1981, they (cough) hilariously made midget midfield maestro Osvaldo Ardiles the centrepiece of the number with his line “in ze cup for Totting-ham”, sung in his native Argentine tones. Bizarrely, when they made the cup final again a year later, Spurs forward Steve Archibald (a man whose bumfluff beard made David de Gea look tough) achieved the obscure feat of appearing on Top of the Pops with two different (ahem) artists on one show when he did his bit for his club team before rocking up with the Scottish national team for their World Cup anthem We Have a Dream. Personally, I've never dreamt about my two centre halves crashing into each like drunken hippos, leaving the Soviet forward a clear run on hapless keeper Alan Rough and sending the team crashing out, as ever, in the first round**.

Anyways, football teams don’t seem to make records these days. Not even the England team, which used to knock out a crock of shit every time they qualified for the World Cup, as did Scotland. Some of these travesties include 1982s This Time (We’ll Get It Right) – which they didn't, obviously, unless getting it right meant Kevin Keegan missing a sitter against Spain to see them knocked out. Four years later, the boys were proclaiming that We’ve Got The Whole World At Our Feet, which seemed a bit presumptuous. Not that it mattered, as Diego Maradona had the whole ball at his hand after he managed to outjump England ‘keeper Peter Shilton, despite being a fat shortarse.

Using a previously unseen degree of common sense, in 1990 the Football Association decided it may be an idea to involve people with experience of writing cutting-edge pop music. Hence, we get New Order singing a song with a wisely tenuous connection to football, vague allusions to the current prevalence of ecstasy in the clubs and John Barnes rapping about nothing in particular. Which, incidentally, was the sum total of what he did at the tournament itself.

But if you want the old school done right, then check out Old Trafford Blues by Martin Buchan, the b-side to Manchester United's 1976 cup final record. Written by the man himself, he tells us all about his teammates, including such lyrical crackers as "then there's Brian Greenhoff, he's got lots of skill/And he really needs it to play with Gordon Hill". Meow, Martin! Despite the title, the backing track is more like incidental music from George and Mildred. Still ace, though.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtazqV2apzA

*Only joking, Scots readers.
** Sorry, again.

History Lesson

I can't help but admit that I'm a total geek when it comes to the history of Manchester United. I love knowing obscure facts and trivia. The worst part is that I can't help correcting people on such things - such as the dad of a friend talking about us beating West Ham 6-1 in 1966 and me butting in "it was in 1967, actually".

Because of this, I've really enjoyed Andy Mitten's series of books featuring former players talking candidly about their careers. We're The Famous Man United and Glory Glory! covered the 1980s and 1990s, now United! United! does the same for the 70s.

It was the most turbulent – and least successful - decade for the club since the 1930s, with five managers overseeing the legendary Busby team of the 60s decline into relegation. A single FA Cup win (plus the Division Two championship) were all the silverware fans had to cheer.

From 1973 to 1977, the club was managed by the flamboyant Tommy Docherty. Though his first full season saw the club endure relegation, they bounced back with a style sure to make older Reds misty eyed, based on youthful energy and skillful wingers. In 1977, they defeated Liverpool 2-1 in the FA Cup final a year after losing out to Southampton – a victory made sweeter as it prevented them from winning an unprecedented treble that United themselves would do in 1999.

All looked good: the forward line of Jimmy Greenhoff and Stuart Pearson (both interviewed here) offered flair, strength and mobility, wingers Gordon “Merlin” Hill and Steve Coppell had pace, unpredictability and industry backed up by young full backs Jimmy Nicholl and Arthur Albiston. The general view was that United would challenge for the big prizes.

Days after the cup victory, it was revealed Docherty was having an affair with the physio’s wife and was sacked with immediate effect. He was replaced with the more sedate Dave Sexton, whose more studied style of play never endeared him to the crowd, not helped by his sale of Stretford End heroes Hill and Pearson, replaced by the industrious Mickey Thomas and aggressive target man Joe Jordan.

Being a well- known hardcore United fan doubtless worked in Mitten’s favour in getting stories from the former heroes. We get honest opinions on teammates and managers. Martin Buchan, captain throughout the second half of the 70s into the early 80s, is complimented by many for being a great leader but is also described as "maybe not as intelligent as he thought he was" by another.

The managers also polarise opinion, especially Sexton, who did have his admirers in the team, such as Lou Macari while others believe the job was too big for a man who intensely disliked dealing with the press.

More so than the previous books, subsequent fortunes of the players after United vary wildly. Joe Jordan is enjoying no little success as assistant manager to Harry Redknapp at Tottenham Hotspur and Sammy McIlory has done wonders as manager with both Macclesfield Town and Morecombe. Gordon Hill runs a soccer school in Texas while Buchan (stated as being "cooler than the Fonz" by fans impressed by his smooth style on and off the pitch) works for the Professional Footballers Association.

At the other end, cult hero Jimmy Greenhoff lost everything when he was a cheated by a partner in an insurance business and, sadder still, has not spoken to his brother Brian, also a United player in the 70s, in decades. Gerry Daly (of the chant “five foot eight, underweight, Gerry Daly’s fucking great”) has suffered terrible personal tragedy and ill health. Several players remember Scots hardman Jim Holton, whose United career was stopped in an instant by a broken leg at Sheffield Wednesday and would die of a heart attack aged 42. Mitten fondly recalls the crowd’s chant of "six foot two, eyes of blue, big Jim Holton’s after you" by stating the man was six foot one, had brown eyes and if he did want to get after anyone, he’d have needed a motorbike to do so. All the same, Holton was good enough to represent Scotland in all three of their undefeated games at the 1974 World Cup, including a credible draw against reigning champions Brazil.

It’s true that this generation of players may be the last for whom playing for one of the biggest clubs in the world wasn't a ticket for life. Many have gone back to "normal" lives once the playing days ended: much-maligned reserve goalkeeper Paddy Roche works as a delivery driver, something you can never imagine a current top-flight player ever having to do outside gross financial mismanagement. Indeed, Lou Macari expresses incredulity when he hears of a "fringe" United player of today buying a £900,000 apartment.

The only negative I take from the books is that I'm jealous of the author for living my dream job - but at the same time I recognise the hard work the guy has put in since founding United We Stand when he was 15. True Reds won't do much better than investing in to his fine work documenting the history of our club.

Guts or Not, Still No Glory

Weeks after the Italian dude decided he couldn't be arsed managing the England team anymore, the dust appears to have settled and the matter of the next guy to take the fall is put aside while the more important matter of the league title race is decided. Thankfully.

At the time of writing, it’s looking nailed on that “Honest” Harry Redknapp will get the gig, especially since his acquittal from wrong-doing. His line that he was, essentially, too stupid to have been able to pull off the financial shenanigans he was accused off must surely rank alongside the Chewbacca Defence.

Though you sometimes wonder if it was indeed a front. A rumour was doing the rounds that when the time came to submit his Spurs squad for the Europa League, he knocked up a badly spelled list with "Ask Joe" (being Joe Jordan, his assistant) for the last three names. Scurrilous, perhaps, but somehow believable.

The key word we've heard, once again, bandied around the media is ‘passion’. Capello, being Italian, didn't have it for the job because he was foreign. Not that it appears to have hindered the Irish, mind, with Trappatoni taking a squad of has-beens (Keane, Given, Dunne) and average also-rans to the European Championships. Perhaps the Irish are less fussy - their most successful manager of all time coming from the country that they’d have every right to hate most of all may well have lowered some prejudices.

Redknapp, it has been judged, does have the passion for the job. England needs an Englishman who understands the spirit for the three lions (that most English of animals, natch) and knows the words to God Save The Queen. All 100 verses, and especially the one about battering that lot North of Carlisle.

But let’s stop a minute, and consider the only manager who could really be considered a successful England manager: Sir Alf Ramsey. Look at the footage of when the fourth goal is scored in the 1966 World Cup final – all around is the chaos of English celebration, except for one man. Ramsey remains seated, calm and dignified. This was a man who undertook lessons to tone down his Essex accent into something more ‘respectable’.

He also had little time for the media, which is an area I always thought Capello was on a hiding to nothing. Redknapp, of course, has his column in a newspaper and his son as a pundit on Sky Sports. Like Terry Venables before him, he’s a London boy part of the capital media scene – journalists know they’ll get little bits of information to keep everybody happy. Capello seemed to have no interest in talking to hacks outside his basic duties as England coach: his personal life, for one, was kept strictly off-limits.

In the end, despite a comparatively leisurely progress to the Euro finals this summer, the press were desperate for him to go and have their (or "the people’s") man in. Capello may well have been looking for an excuse to bail – sticking up for John Terry of all people seems an odd way to make a stand – and perhaps he thought that he was on a hiding to nothing in terms of getting any decent results out of the squad.

Not that he was blameless as a coach, presiding over some of the worst performances by an England team at a World Cup since the first two games in Mexico ’86. Additionally, the decision to allow David Beckham to hang around the squad was a beyond odd choice from a coach with so much experience. After the snottering at the hands of the ever-reliable Germans, he doubtless should have taken a leaf from their book and looked to build a squad of hungry young players for 2014. Signs of this were seen when the likes of Danny Welbeck, Phil Jones and Kyle Walker were blooded, but an insistence on keeping Terry, Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard in the squad – despite repeated failures in various championships – gave the impression of a man afraid to make all the changes needed.

As things are, we need to see if Redknapp's ego blinds him to common sense and he takes the job. Yet no matter who is in charge, it's a struggle to see England impressing this summer, especially when they have to get past France, Sweden and Ukraine. Comedy hi-jinks may well be there for the nation to enjoy.

Philosophy Football

So. Farewell, Sócrates Brasileiro Sampaio de Souza Vieira de Oliveira (don’t you love names from that part of the world?). Your passing brought up many pundits talking about the Brazil team of 1982 that you captained. “Best team to never win the World Cup,” they say, and they may well be right. I've watched the game that was their downfall, when Italy’s Paolo Rossi goal hanged a hat-trick past them, creating the start of his own legend in the process.

Commentator John Motson made an astute point on that game, that with the score at 2-2, which was enough to send Brazil to the semi-final, the South Americans were still looking for another goal. This attitude, along with some inept defending, ensured they went home empty-handed. Some have said that they've never had that wonderfully cavalier attitude since. A sentiment I can relate to after staying up till silly o'clock to watch the 1994 World Cup final.

Sócrates was the heartbeat of that 1982 team. Watch their second goal in the above mentioned game, where he picks the ball up in the middle of the park, plays to Zico and bursts through to pick up the sublime return ball, still having the skill to put it past Dino Zoff from a narrow angle. He was one of the icons of that tournament, bearded and gangly, socks rolled down.

My own personal connection to him also comes down to appearance. He was pretty much built the same as me: tall (six foot four) and rake thin, he gave lie to the cliché that “big men” couldn't be graceful on the pitch. The line “he’s got a good touch for a big fella” would suggest that once you get over about six foot tall, you’re incapable of acting in any way except like Frankenstein’s monster.

He was perhaps one of the last of the top footballers who went through higher education. He put off turning pro until he’d finished his studies to become a doctor of medicine. Of course, we've had Engish players with degrees (former Man United players Steve Coppell and Alan Gowling spring to mind), but not many had the charisma of the Brazilian. He campaigned for democracy at a time when his country was ruled by a military dictatorship – perhaps he realised that his status allowed him to say things that most others could never get away with.

Plus, of course, he came from an era where you could get away with playing football at the highest level despite liking nothing better than puffing away on cigarettes and swigging bottles of beer on a pretty regular basis, a lifestyle which may not have helped his chances in the longevity stakes. From interviews I read, he didn't seem to give a fuck. Blackburn fans may wish to add Simon Garner here.

This brings us to the present, and the good Doctor’s expiration. We could do with more characters like him in the game, people who can construct sentences that don’t require “you know” placed in them somewhere. But maybe Sócrates was a one-off. If you’re a fan of football, check out clips of him and his Brazil side on youtube – talent like that deserves to be remembered.

At Least They Tried

Being a football fan is all the extremes. It’s what we remember – seasons that stick in the mind tend to be when you’re either going for the championship, or clinging on for survival against relegation. Nobody really talks about the time you came 13th and had nothing to play for after you got dumped out of the cups in the first round.

So it is with players too. Heroes and villains, geniuses and donkeys. Every club has had the reliable type, usually a centre half or full back, who plays 300 games with distinction, but it’s more likely that in the pub we’re talking about the enigmatic winger who can win a game on his own, or the liability of a goalkeeper who throws a few in every season.

In terms of the latter camp, we all enjoy a cheap laugh at the expense of some poor sap who just didn't click. They may well have been good, even very good: the likes of Alan Brazil, Kleberson and Neil Webb played at international tournaments and had plenty of success elsewhere. But for whatever reason (injury, pressure) it didn't work out for them at Manchester United. Here’s my top five Old Trafford failures in my time supporting the club.

Ralph Milne
To give him his dues, Ralphie was a big part of why Dundee United enjoyed some success in the mid 80s. A quick, skilful winger, he’s still their top scorer in European competitions and should have been a Scottish international.

Should have. Ah, the fatal kiss of promise, how bitter the taste lingers. Sadly, a penchant for a drink saw young Milne binned off to Charlton in 1986. But as they were a top flight team at the time, there was still a chance to turn it round. Alas, a few months later, he was shipped off to third division outfit Bristol City, having failed to set English football on fire.

Then, in a show of bizarre transfer dealing that would become a trademark, Fergie elected to give him a chance on the big stage again.

At £175,000, it was probably a gamble worth taking, but replacing as he did Jesper Olsen – an erratic player, but one always capable of a flash of flair – the sight of a prematurely aging Scotsman lumbering down the left wing was never going to prove popular with the Old Trafford faithful. He managed to hold down a place through most of the 1988/89 season, which proved to be our worst since relegation in 1974. Over the summer, Danny Wallace was brought in to take the 11 shirt, and with Lee Sharpe also making a name for himself, poor Ralphie was left to hang out in the reserve team for two years before he was given a free transfer to obscurity.

Jim Leighton
Sorry, Scots readers. I don’t want to be seen to be Jockophobic, but “Slippery” Jim’s name has long gone down in Manchester United history as a byword for erratic goalkeeping and disaster between the sticks.

But how was it so? After all, the man had long established himself as a top player both with Scotland (in the days they always qualified for the World Cup) and Aberdeen (in the days you didn't need to be called Celtic or Rangers to win something in Scottish football). With Gary Bailey retired, Gary Walsh too inexperienced and Chris Turner lacking in quality, he seemed the perfect man to improve a team that had finished second in 1988.

Instead, we endured two years of mid table mediocrity in the league during which he became a target of derision for fans: Red Issue magazine produced a spoof advert for the Jim Leighton Condom (“Catches nothing!”). Come the 1990 FA Cup final, he didn't look at all steady on his toes and it was only a late Mark Hughes goal that earned a reply. In a ruthless, but correct, move, Ferguson dropped the man he’d taken from Aberdeen to the World Cup in Mexico for Les Sealey, who was on loan from Luton.

Les, who gave truth to the adage of goalies being mad, played well in the replay and kept the shirt, earning a European Cup Winners Cup medal and the love from the fans that his predecessor never had. Poor Jim played one more game, against Halifax in the League Cup before drifting back across the border. To his huge credit, he re-found his form with impressive spells at Hibernian and back at Aberdeen, proving good enough to once again play at the World Cup in 1998.

Eric Djemba-Djemba
“So good, they named him twice!” was the joke at the time. Originally, it wasn't ironic, as his sorting of Sol Campbell on his Charity Shield debut earned many approving nods and having the same first name as the King also seemed some kind of omen.

With Roy Keane nearing the end of his days as linchpin of the midfield, a somewhat desperate search to fill the midfield began. Liam Miller and Kleberson were also brought in to different levels of failure in a search that wasn't really ended until Owen Hargreaves arrived in 2007. Of course, that solution turned out to be somewhat fleeting.

Poor Eric, meanwhile, turned out to be hopelessly out of his depth in the Premiership. My abiding memory is of his freakish goal against Leeds, where he managed to half-volley a cross into the roof of the net, after which he seemed as surprised as we were. We were equally surprised when he was offloaded to Aston Villa. One can only assume Martin O’Neill owed Fergie a huge favour as he was soon packed off on loan to Burnley.

His contract at Villa was later ripped up, and he seems to have found his level playing in the Danish league.

David Bellion
Proof that just being really, really fast isn't enough to be a top footballer, the career of David Bellion also showed that the lesson of Franz Carr was forgotten very quickly.

That aside, the reason we signed someone who hadn't exactly done the business at Sunderland baffles to this day. The term “headless chicken” doesn't quite do justice to David’s style of play, in which concepts such as a ball control, positioning and passing were thrown right out of the window. The highlight of his two year spell was scoring past Arsenal in the first few seconds of a League Cup tie, albeit helped by the keeper spooning his soft shot into the net.

Like Djemba-Djemba, the biggest surprise was not only that we managed to offload him, but that it was a top flight side that came in for him, and he returned to his native France with Nice. After a spell with Bordeaux, he's back there now, which shows somebody obviously rates him.

Bebe
We conclude on the most odd of the lot. Signed despite Fergie having never seen him play, all the stories at the time were that he’d pretty much been living in a cardboard box a year before. More annoying, especially given that most cruel of mistresses, hindsight, was that for the same money we could have had established international Rafael Van der Vaart.

The whole transfer was covered in mystery, with plenty of rumours that I probably shouldn't repeat under advice from my lawyer*. Needless to say, nobody saw us signing some random kid who had only played a few games for minor teams in Portugal. In terms of shock factor, it was a biggie and at the time, this hack wondered whether a stroke of genius had been pulled off. Sadly, in turns out that all those stories in football comics that I read as a kid, where some guy is spotted playing in the park on Friday and on Saturday is hammering in the winner for his favourite team in the cup final, turned out to not have any basis in reality.

Early on, he managed to bluff a couple of goals, which suggested he might have something about his game. But then came the fiasco against Crawley Town, where United laboured to a 1-0 victory against a non-league team. Nobody came out of that one with honours, but Bebe especially managed to perform as if the ball was some strange object that could cause lethal illness if touched. Subsequently, he was kept far away from the first team and was loaned out to Turkey in the summer. Only a few games into this fresh start, he broke his leg. Ouch.


*I don’t actually have a lawyer. I just wanted to say that to make myself sound “in the know”.

Silver

I’m just too young to remember a time before Alex Ferguson managed Manchester United - in fact, perhaps we should refer to any year prior to 1986 as BF – but I was there at Old Trafford when he marked 25 years in the job and I was in the stand that from that day on bears his name.

What I can, just about, remember is the state of the club in the late 80s: full of players with drinking problems, injury problems and not-good-enough problems. He made some vital early signings (Brian McClair, Steve Bruce), not so vital signings (Viv Anderson, Jim Leighton) and cleared out the dead wood, despite some being fan favourites (Paul McGrath, Norman Whiteside). But he also brought back Mark Hughes, a move he described as giving the fans their “hero” back.

Despite finishing second behind Liverpool in his first full season (albeit by a huge distance), a slip into the mid-table mire followed. Much has been made of the FA Cup 3rd round tie vs Nottingham Forest in December 1989 and the subsequent run that saw our first bit of silverware under the Fergie regime. But for this fan, it didn't say that much. Sure, it was nice to win something, but from watching my “Official History” video, even the nine-year-old me knew it didn't say too much: previous wins in the same competition in 1977, 83 and 85 hadn't led to further glory.

No. The real turning point was a few months later, in a League Cup tie at Arsenal, at that point in the height of their George Graham-inspired powers. League title winners in 1990, they would do it again that season and were known for their rock solid defence and ability to grind out 1-0 victories. And we drubbed them 6-2. I've always been of the belief that the team that day, which featured Irwin, Bruce, Pallister, Ince, Sharpe and McClair, all of whom would play a part in bringing the title home after 26 years, gained a lot of their subsequent confidence that day, a feeling that they could at last compete with the best. Sad to say, Man City’s recent hammering of United could have the same effect.

The rest of Ferguson’s achievements are well listed. I remember when we won the league in 1993, some joker at school put up a load of posters listing the events that had happened in the years between that and our last championship: Berlin Wall coming down, man on the moon, Nelson Mandela being freed etc. The last line read something like “remember, United, it’s not winning the league once that’s important, it’s keeping hold of it”. 12 titles in 18 years has firmly put that one to bed and nearly knocked Liverpool “off their fucking perch”.

Nearly? Well, there’s still the matter of European Cups. We have three, they have five and it’s something they still hold over us. If not for the small matter of Barcelona being the best club in the world, we may well have equalled it, and I sometimes wonder if the pursuit of further glory in this competition is what drives the man on still.

At times, I've despaired at some of his decisions. Getting into a fight he could never win over some horse spunk with some Irish businessmen did nobody any favours, not least because they owned shares in the club which they subsequently sold to the Glazer family, miring the club into debt for the first time in years. That he should then come out in support of the parasitical fucks on several occasions is more depressing still.

Despite that, the man is a football manager and in that regard, he’s the top dog. Even Jose Mourinho, a man not known for his humble nature, stated that he didn’t call Fergie “Sir” or “Mr Ferguson” – he calls him “the Boss”.

Insult Thy Neighbour

If anything amused me about the whole Joey Barton link with Manchester United non-story, it was the reaction of various United fans on the internet, generally amongst the lines of "I don't care if that Scouse fuck scores a hat trick every game, I don't want to see him in the shirt". You wouldn't get a more extreme response if the club had announced Harold Shipman as the new Club Doctor and hired Fred West to renovate the South Stand.

My own personal response was that putting all other matters aside, he just isn't good enough if the team are set to have any chance on the Mission: Impossible-esque task of getting up to Barcelona standard. Though I did enjoy that his response to Frank Lampard moving tables during an England squad breakfast rather than sit with young Joseph was "I wasn't going to nick your breakfast, you fat prick".

Those other matters, however, seem to be that a) He used to play for Manchester City b) he has been something of a thug in the past and c) He's from the Merseyside area.

All of which reminded me of how in this country we do like our rivalries. I'm from Cumbria, so we didn't like "that lot" down South. I'm from West Cumbria, so we didn't like "that lot" from Carlisle, thinking they saw us as a bunch of rural hicks. Then, I'm from Whitehaven, so we didn't like the "Jam Eaters" (long story) from Workington. It went as far as when I was a young nipper and we moved to a shiny new housing estate, the kids on my street instantly formed a rivalry with those on the next street, which mainly consisted of throwing tiny rocks at each other from a distance of about 100 yards. Well, we were only about six at the time.

I often wonder whether this happens in other countries? Take Liverpool and Manchester - only 30-odd miles apart, yet with very distinctive accents. Joy Division could never have been scousers, but equally the Bunnymen couldn't have been Manc or Salford lads. Is the difference between, say, Dusseldorf and Cologne as wide? I'm not even referring to the extreme kinds of nationalism that we've sadly seen in the last few days, but a need to create any kind of rivarily no matter how small - do the people of this rock in the North Sea just like a scrap (even if only just verbally) that much?

End of a Season

Another season comes to a close and let's be frank, as a Manchester United fan, it was hard to be too disappointed with what happened on Saturday night. Barcelona are as good as the hype and we're not actually that good, compared to previous years at least. If you'd said to me in November that we would win the league and reach the Champions League final, I'd have assumed you'd been sniffing the glue.

As for the final, I'm not sure we ever stood much chance. We needed them to have a major off day and for us to play beyond our best. It didn't happen. Perhaps if we'd invested in some kind of cloning machine to make up versions of Bryan Robson circa 1984 and Mark Hughes circa 1991, we'd have been able to make a better fight of it but, alas, science still has a lot to do.

REASONS TO BE CHEERFUL
1) Javier Hernandez emerging as a potentially world-class striker. When the news came through prior to the World Cup, I doubt most fans had much idea of what would happen. He got the team out of jail several times, notably at Stoke and West Brom, and his winner against Everton kept us on track for the title after the wobble at Newcastle.

2) Chris Smalling turning out to be a handy defender, which was just as well after Jonny Evans seemed to forget how to play football with any degree of confidence. Smooth on the ball in the tradition of McQueen, Pallister and Ferdinand, he can only get better by learning from the latter of those and Vidic. In his first couple of appearances, he looked hopelessly lost on the big stage, but he's proven to be a quick learner and bar the odd mistake we can put down to lack of experience, I'm never worried to see his name on the team sheet.

3) Having watched the FA Youth Cup final 2nd leg last week, we've got a few young lads who look like they could make it in Ravel Morrison, Paul Pogba and Ryan Tunnicliffe, assuming the first of those can stay out of jail. With Tom Cleverley and Danny Welbeck both impressing in their loan spells, you'd hope next season will see them given the chance to shine, especially with Giggs and Scholes getting older and Darron Gibson just not being good enough.

REASONS TO WORRY
1) The Glazers potentially preventing the kind of investment the squad needs to stay on top, especially with the Money Pit up the road finally breaking their trophy drought and making it into the big boys league. Whoever gets the poisoned chalice of the Chelsea hotseat will also doubtless have big bucks to spunk on whoever they fancy either. Luckily, Arsenal will do their usual implosion next season, so no need to worry about them.

2) Edwin van der Sar retiring. Before the 1990s, United teams usually had a pretty decent keeper who was just short of top class (Stepney, Bailey, Sealey) or a bit ropey (Roche, Leighton). Thankfully, we've been blessed with two of the best in the big Danish guy and Mr Ed. But with the Dutchman taking a well deserved break at the age of 40, the worry is that we'll go through the same fiasco we did after 1999. If we'd signed Eddie then, I reckon we might have won another European title or two. Still, thanks for the memories, big fella, and take it easy.

3) The lack of quality in midfield. Owen Hargreaves has been binned off, itself a great shame as we've sorely missed a proper ball winner in the middle of the park. Capitulations against Liverpool, Arsenal, City in the cup and Barcelona were not helped by the lack of someone to spoil the other's teams play. In the past, we've had Robson, Ince and Keane, three of the best. Here's hoping Fergie has identified a solution.

To conclude, any season we win the league is a good one by my standards. When I was a kid, I always wondered whether we'd win more championships and European Cups than Liverpool. We've done half of that, and if not for the fact of one insanely good team, we might have even equalled them on the other. Always next year.

Language, Language

I can only assume it was a slow weekend for news, as I can't find any other explanation for journalists across the country acting like a fleet of Helen Lovejoys because Wayne Rooney swore after scoring a (somewhat important) goal on Saturday.

The Daily Mail seemed to enjoy putting the boot in, asking "why do we indulge football's neanderthal Wayne Rooney?" and stating that Rooney saying "what? Fucking what? Fuck off!" to a cameraman "left millions of armchair soccer fans appalled". Won't somebody think of the children?

I should say first of all that I am a Manchester United fan but really, can we get some perspective here? Millions? I would wager that a large section of those watching would also have been United fans, and would have at that moment been jumping around the room/pub celebrating our team taking the lead after being two down. Certainly my own language in those moments matched it.

Indeed, it's a sad state of affairs when one of the voices of reason in the media is Alan Shearer, who stated on Match of the Day that it was stupid, but he apologised (or the club did on his behalf) so let's move on. Shearer perhaps understands whatever emotions the 'offender' was going through at that time and that when scoring a vital goal at a vital time of the reason, common sense tends to vacate the area. Not that it stopped his colleagues on Match of the Day 2 re-examining it the following night.

What strikes me as the bigger question is why the hell Wayne Rooney is held up as any kind of role model in the first place. He's just some guy from Liverpool who happened to be born with a gift for playing football. Everybody knows he's a bit of an idiot judging by the way he carries on his private life, and I'm sure he'd never claim to be much of a thinker. And let's remember, it's not like he's stolen from someone, been caught drink-driving or shooting some kid with an air rifle.

On a personal note, I actually found it quite amusing that he told the cameraman to fuck off, as I'm pretty sick of seeing players kissing the camera after scoring, which perhaps reflects as to who they consider their true paymasters. And besides, if we were worried about the impact on impressionable children, then we best ban them from football altogether as during any game it's not unknown to hear thousands of people question the parentage and sexual activities (solo or otherwise) of the 23 people on the pitch.