EDITORIAL FEATURES 15 Unspoken Loyalty 16 The Collector How on earth did it come to this? How did Manchester United spend hundreds of millions, only to get worse and worse and worse? The team have been in the bottom half of the table, struggle to score and are in the bottom three performers judged by a raft of other statistics. United had won one in 11 in Europe prior to the PAOK game. I can scarcely believe I’m writing that. Not one in 11 against top sides, but middle ranking sides – since that’s what England’s greatest football club has also become. When Sir Jim Ratcliffe said earlier this year that success in football is usually in a direct correlation to how much money is spent, few disputed it since it’s usually true. Except in the case of United, where it isn’t. It’s baffling how we ended up here. Hindsight helps us understand it better, but I didn’t see many Captain Hindsights complaining when Alexis Sanchez was signed. Or Cristiano, Di Maria, Schweinsteiger, Pogba etc, etc, etc. And there are a lot of etcetera’s because there have been so so many poor signings. With that in mind, excuse the fans for being six times bitten and a little shyer than usual. We’ve had so many false dawns in the last decade, invested so much time and energy into the idea that sunlit uplands were only ever a couple of years away that we should be excused for not getting carried away with the appointment of Ruben Amorim. I really hope that the young Portuguese is as successful as Ferguson or Busby. He has an impressive CV, just as his predecessors did – that’s why they got the United job after all. Amorim comes across well with the media, his English is excellent, he’s revolutionised Sporting in Lisbon. More power to his elbow and he’ll be backed, like those managers he’s followed, by fans and finance. He’ll have a honeymoon period, his attributes will be positively compared with those before him… and then reality will strike. Six months into Erik Ten Hag, I thought that reality would be United back as a toplevel team again, but he never got back to those heights, save for epic cup wins against Liverpool and city. For that’s what United in 2024 have become, a domestic cup side much like the 1980s. Those cup wins have been a buzz and I don’t remember anyone old enough to have been around in the 80s saying that they hated that decade nor that they only follow United for the glory, but that’s what’s happened. United are so far from the top that, once again, it’ll take time. We’ve had to reset our two-year timers and hope for steady progress along the way, clear evidence of improvement. We’ll compare the best of Amorim with the worst of Ten Hag to make ourselves feel like we’re onto something as he goes through the usual motions of making the squad his own. Players on massive contracts signed for massive fees will be jettisoned to resume a normal, relatively stress free, football life, with millions in the bank their most obvious positive from their time in M16. Each will have their own truth as to why things didn’t work out, another sad tale in the dismal post Ferguson era. Thirty-five years ago this month, in November 1989, we sold UWS for the first time outside Old Trafford. United were mid-table with a few decent players and a few more injuries, but miles off the top. I used to laugh at the circumstances in which we started this fanzine and think that we’d never go there again, that it was impossible for United to sink so low again. United was as unsinkable as the Titanic, but we’re back there in the land of a goal difference deficits and regular home defeats. I hope this is our lowest point of modern times in a football sense and the optimist in me thinks it will be, but I think the new manager has an almost impossible job make sense of a dressing room which is as complicated as the club’s ownership structure. All the best to Ruben Amorim and those around him. We really really want you to succeed. But that’s the biggest but of all. Enjoy this issue, Andy Editor 22 A tasty trip to Istanbul 24 Chas Banks 29 United Women 33 Tale of Two Cities 36 Bolivia 39 Transmisson 40 We’ll Meet Again: Bodø Glimt REGULARS 04-07 manUvia 08-09 Guttersnipe 14 Jim White 20 Keith Dewhurst 42 GAWI