United Road Take Me Home

On the Wayne?

We’ve all been there. Your bladder’s screaming at you for relief, but there’s a good 20 minutes to half-time and United are pressing. Ignore it. 5 minutes later, the ball’s out of play and you’re doing that sideways shuffle down the aisle, muttered apologies strewn in your wake. Leg it down the steps. Unzip. Sweet Jesus that’s good. And then, in your blissful trance you become aware of a dip or hush in the noise from outside. What’s happening? You find out soon enough as the terrible muffled roar erupts and the realisation that you’ve missed a goal hits home.


Such is the familiarity of this scenario that it drags another familiar one with it, the notion that, if United are finding a goal hard to come by, then you can help the cause by going for what we might call a propitiatory piss, daring the fates to conjure a goal in your absence. You’ll miss it, but the greater good will have been served.

Well this blog-post is kind of in that vein, I’m willing to take a hit for the greater good. Obviously this won’t involve micturation, instead it will involve me making foolhardy pronouncements about a player’s value that I hope will come back to bite me the next time he runs out in a red shirt. I’ll slag him off, and he’ll prove just what a know-nothing I really am. Simple.

Twelve months ago, what I’m about to write would have seemed unthinkable. One, because the player himself was having a season so electrifying many people had us down as a one man team, and second, because, for many of us, he had come to embody what we believed United stood for, he was us out there doing what we could never do. And now? Well, the picture’s slightly different.

Let’s tackle the form first. In a season blighted by injury he has netted just twice, once from the penalty spot and once – and a pretty speculative effort it was too – from open play. The goals tally is one thing, the rotten first touch and equally stinking distribution are quite another. Effort and endeavour aren’t lacking – he is, in that old cliché beloved of pundits, ‘probably trying too hard’, trite and banal, but accurate in the way it flags up the way what was once effortless and instinctive has deserted him.

All players have bad spells of course, and Wayne – oh, yes, if you haven’t realised that’s who I’m on about – is only human, it’s what Rooney pulled earlier in the season that means he’s going to get called out on it now in ways that he wouldn’t in seasons gone by. We’re all grown-ups of course. We knew that he was Everton at heart, and that if he was willing to abandon the club of his youth in pursuit of wealth and glory, then he’d do the same to us if similar opportunities came knocking on Paul Stretford’s door. We know all this, but we were still floored by his actions, hurt in ways that we could only be someone we had loved unconditionally, forgetting that on his side, there were conditions aplenty.

Against Spurs yesterday it almost hurt to see him toil so forlornly, to see him such a shadow of the force that rampaged through last season and that, in the last 15 minutes of the Carling Cup semi at Eastlands gave a performance that I’d put up there with Keano in Turin. But knowing the brinksmanship pulled on his behalf, knowing how bloated his wage packet he is, and how much he’s willing to pay for a packet of fags, sympathy dries up, and you’re left wondering if he can ever be the same player he was again.

And so, with that said, a simple message remains: prove me wrong Wayne. Please.

posted by Royton Red @ 9:56 PM 0 comments

Same old city?

I’ll be honest – I’m getting nervous. I’m writing this at about ten in the morning, and, for at least the next 8 hours, the summit of the Premier League table is occupied by Manchester City. Should we fail to get a point at Spurs this afternoon, their tenancy will be extended for at least another week. Delirium will be writ large throughout Stockport and surrounding areas, plans will already be being made to travel to all next season’s Champion’s League games by bogey, and Gary Cook will be buying up space on every billboard and bus-stop in the North-West to do his crowing.


Such premature self-congratulation is of course, one of the many traits that make the Manchester City Project such a comedic gift. Should Spurs not be their usual obliging selves as whenever the reds roll into town, there will be consolation and comfort taken in the fact that we still have two games in hands on the laser-blues. In some ways, this is a whole loaf of comfort, rather than a few scattered crumbs, but it’s this that sets the anxiety rippling through the stomach.

I’ve already got a last-season-at-Burnley feeling about next week’s trip to Blackpool, particularly given our habit of chucking away winning positions away from home. Another draw looms. The gap is shaved a bit closer. Then there’s the Chelsea game, shifted to a point when they may finally have remembered how to win matches, or at least not lose them. Another draw. Then where are we?

I’m discounting Arsenal from the title-run in, too flimsy at the back, and – clichéd it might be, but it’s hard to dispute – too easily outmuscled by sides unwilling to sit back and applaud their undeniable artistry. As for Chelsea, too many cheap points lost in the last couple of months. Which leaves two; us and them. Them first.

You keep telling yourself; they’re city, they’ll find a way to blow it. They could be five-nil up at half-time, nailed on certs, and they’d still engineer a way to lose 6-5 (Mancini urging them on from the touchline, telling them 5-6 will do maybe). But then you look at some of the personnel involved: Tevez, Yaya Toure, Silva, Mancini himself, and you start to feel a bit edgy. We’re not in the Kippax anymore, Dorothy.

As for us, we’re unbeaten, but at times, like Villa and Birmingham away for instance, we look utterly mediocre. That’s not to deny that we haven’t also played some thoroughly wonderful stuff, and it’s important to note players like Vidic, Berbatov and the rejuvenated Anderson, all of whom are probably having their most consistent seasons in United shirts. Other positives? Hernandez has done great work, we’ve proved that we can play devastating football without Scholes as the fulcrum, Carrick is creeping back towards his best, Rafael has made the right-back position his own. And we’ve achieved all of this with Rooney largely on the periphery. And we’re unbeaten.

All of which serves to quell the storm of nerves for a minute or two, but then you glance at the table again, the what if’s surge back, and you wonder if it would be sporting to have some kind of formal ceremony in which we hand the banner over.

A win today should diminish the chances of that having to happen.

posted by Royton Red @ 11:33 AM 0 comments