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HOW WAS IT FOR YOU? October 8: Apologies to Eni Aluko for last month repeating a tabloid story and in my support for her and her right to an opinion and career in journalism, (and stating I think her bullied) saying she doesn’t make it easy for herself with some of her comments. She doesn’t, but the one I quoted was it appears made up. 13: Hotel Football, the hotel at the bottom of Sir Matt Busby Way has posted losses of £600k this past year and that adds to an overall loss of £9.5m – some sting for the owners no matter what they’re worth. So why continue with the project? I imagine for property mogul Gary the land it sits on with Ratcliffe mooting a new stadium and Trafford MBC looking to milk us as, sitting tight and awaiting offers is where the real profit lies. 14: There was no small amount of skullduggery when Nigeria beat their hosts Libya 3-0 without having to kick a ball. The game was due to be played in Libya on the Tuesday evening and so they flew to Libya on Sunday night, but found their flight diverted to Al Abraq Airport, a threehour drive away from their original destination Benghazi. There they weren’t welcomed by anybody never mind the Libyan FA, instead they were left stranded for over 12 hours without food or water; and the airport gates were locked and there wasn’t a phone signal. CAF postponed the match after Nigeria refused to play and flew home instead, and after an investigation, they found the Libyan Football Federation to have breached ‘ethics and fair play rules’. The word ‘kidnapping’ was also used, and the governing body awarded Nigeria three points and three goals calling the host’s actions inhumane. 15: England haven’t appointed an Englishman for the appointment of team manager. After looking at the extremely strong candidate list; Potter, Carsley, Howe, Warnock, Allardyce, Dyce, Edwards; they decided on German Thomas Tuchel, sending social media and tabloids alike into a xenophobic meltdown, Good/Bad Good RVN. what a man. Titanic Plum Porter Dunham Massey Altrincham Market Manchester keeping £2 buses Night buses running as far as Bolton Little bars in Porto and Kadikoy 25/05/2024: Thanks Erik New Cure material Onana (There. I’ve said it) Onana double save against the Turks . Interim Manager bounce Portuguese Pasteis De Natas Hojlund vs Brentford The Wild Robot The new Jack White album Casemiro v Leicester Blossoms Having a succession plan and carrying it out swiftly and (seemingly) without a hiccup. Seeing how much the other night meant to Ruud. Scoring five times in one match (and it could have been more). Chiellini’s pride wearing a Keane 16 shirt. The instant mood change preLeicester game with EtH gone. There was actual optimism. Ruud looking smooth on the touchline. Morrissey and Graham Nash giving big donations to save Salford Lads club The Adidas gear coming out last few months. Been really good and marked step up. Pastel de nata. Best thing that’s come out of Portugal since… well, ever. Candy apple red fender telecasters. UWS Quiz — (doing the quiz with a load of random lads half of which don’t know one another after the Brentford match) Springsteen tickets at Co-Op Live Viennese whirls The Maccabees reforming Putting EtH (and us) out of his misery Chido Obi-Martin, a centre forward in the United under 18 side. Looks a real handful. Spurs away in the league cup. Big allocation. London. And away. Bad The weird obsession with the Ballon d’or. It’s a team game. most of the players are shit and Patrice Evra going out of his way to annoy me. Northern Rail still using fax Job Market Buses at FT randomly stopping Asset stripping NHS waiting times Cuts to 5 Live and Asian Network news The death of a good euro away end. Turkish authorities and police, Ratcliffe’s penny pinching ruining the one effective ticketing system we had. VAR, VAR and VAR Scrapping Euro collections Ever growing OT Turnstile queues (25 min vs Brentford for tier2 Stretford end ) Dutch pancakes Adults in Halloween gear Interim Manager Bounce Costly managerial flip flopping Madrid’s no show at Ballon D’or. Grow up Being constantly inundated with America’s election bullshit. kids who don’t say thank you for Halloween sweets
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UNITED WE STAND 352 | 5 the slow, life-draining chudder of the tram as it climbs up to DeansgateCastlefield. The twat next to me in the gym wearing very very tight cycling shorts that leave nothing to the imagination. My age meaning I stand up a split second after most other people in the ground. And it takes a bit of effort. The floods in Valencia, devastating Michael Oliver – how many times has he done us dirty? Lynchings in front yards for Halloween – it’s for kids ffs. Ex United players working as pundits. They just add more pressure. Joker: Folie à Deux. Both Christmas fixtures being evening kick offs. From the regulars on uwsonline.com Mad Cyril Whenever a new manager is appointed at United (or I suppose any club) there are initial waves of optimism. In pretty much all cases it is down to the failure of the last incumbent to produces results and performances on the pitch. In our case due to the size and reputation of United, and our deep pockets the targets and eventual choice tend to be huge names in world football. Ruben Amorim fits this bill and was supposedly sought after by several of our rivals. The reasons for this are obvious, he has completely transformed the fortunes of Sporting, winning titles for them, and cups and breaking up a two decade Benfica/Porto dominance of the Portuguese League (he also won three league titles as a Benfica player which should hopefully assuage anyone in the changing room questioning the young man’s credentials – after all he’s not much older than Jonny Evans! Adam Bate on Sky Sports wrote that ‘he brought clarity to a chaotic club’. Christ we need a bit of that. He is also known for his trust in young players and how much he gives them a chance, music to the ears of the lads in our current Under 18s whose form has given those of us who follow them closely a glimmer of hope in what has been a grim season so far. Reasons to be pessimistic? Well, we’ve been here before so many times post Ferguson. So many managers have come in and failed. When Erik ten hag arrived in 2022 from an Ajax side that were winning titles and playing great football in European competitions it seemed like we had the man who would get us back challenging. For a period after the World Cup, it all seemed to have clicked culminating in the League Cup victory versus Newcastle. Then we began to see the start of what we have seen so many times before. Yes we were decimated with injuries last season but the football was dire and the decisions from the manager baffling. Fans stayed patient (United fans, those at the games anyway, always are). Patience was rewarded with the FA Cup win against city, one of the great days in our club history. That delayed the inevitable. We all wanted Ten hag to succeed, he seems a good man, his open letter to the fans after losing his job would seem to back this up. Moyes was out of his depth. Van Gaal and Mourinho, like Ten Hag looked for a time like it would work until it all went wrong so quickly. Solskjaer was a breath of fresh air for a time but never should have been given the job permanently. Rangnick’s best contribution was saying the club needed ‘open heart surgery’ he was right and in fairness to the new owners we seem to have had it. A completely new structure in place with Amorin as head coach. They seemed to make the appointment incredibly quickly following Ten Hag’s departure, presumably talks have been going on for weeks – Ugarte, a player Amorim signed for Sporting for a record fee may or not allude to that. My main hope with Amorim is that we don’t need to keep talking about ‘giving him two transfers windows’ and bringing his own spine of a team in. We’ve done that before and it hasn’t worked. He needs to shape this squad we have now, all of whom are international footballers on huge salaries into something resembling a team who can challenge for the top honours, we have wasted enough years. the Daily Mail calling it a dark day for English football, and little Tommy Robinson’s worried whether ‘ten German bombers’ would still get airplay. ‘Gianni Foreigner, coming over here taking our jobs…..’ 16: The cost cutting continues at OT under the new dictatorship as SAF is told he’s to step down from his ambassadorial role. Eric wasn’t pleased saying the decision was made by ‘shitbags’. So what will they do with the savings? Well it’s already been spent on a new wall at Carrington to stop prying eyes. What are the spies going to feedback, how not to play football very well? 17: Ex city star Mendy is suing the Abu Dabi outfit for being singled out and docked wages after partying. He feels if he was fined, others who also attended the same private functions, should also have faced fines. Mendy happily named his partying bedfellows, which hasn’t pleased Raheem Sterling in particular as he lent Mendy the money to bring the action. 18: In today’s football economy everything is monetized and last year’s injury costs were totted up for each of the Premier League clubs, and the amount of £39.81m laid against us, saw us top the table. The cost is calculated by multiplying the daily base salary by the number of days injured. 19: We struggle past Brentford but win in the end, but for the sportswashing North East Toon it’s now 438 mins since they last scored a goal from open play. How long is that? Well in numbers its 14 minutes more than the youngest bride ever to be married in Saudi. 24: Fenerbahce sees another disappointing draw and our awful European record goes on. 27: West Ham away, the worst of aways for an away fan, and probably a home fan also, sees a defeat from the jaws of victory after a first half where no player could have hit a cow’s arse with a banjo, and a second half of such incompetency that only a penalty decision made by the VAR team and their Saudi guest referee Michael Oliver, who clearly wanted to see how

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HOW WAS IT FOR YOU?

October 8: Apologies to Eni Aluko for last month repeating a tabloid story and in my support for her and her right to an opinion and career in journalism, (and stating I think her bullied) saying she doesn’t make it easy for herself with some of her comments. She doesn’t, but the one I quoted was it appears made up. 13: Hotel Football, the hotel at the bottom of Sir Matt Busby Way has posted losses of £600k this past year and that adds to an overall loss of £9.5m – some sting for the owners no matter what they’re worth. So why continue with the project? I imagine for property mogul Gary the land it sits on with Ratcliffe mooting a new stadium and Trafford MBC looking to milk us as, sitting tight and awaiting offers is where the real profit lies. 14: There was no small amount of skullduggery when Nigeria beat their hosts Libya 3-0 without having to kick a ball. The game was due to be played in Libya on the Tuesday evening and so they flew to Libya on Sunday night, but found their flight diverted to Al Abraq Airport, a threehour drive away from their original destination Benghazi. There they weren’t welcomed by anybody never mind the Libyan FA, instead they were left stranded for over 12 hours without food or water; and the airport gates were locked and there wasn’t a phone signal. CAF postponed the match after Nigeria refused to play and flew home instead, and after an investigation, they found the Libyan Football Federation to have breached ‘ethics and fair play rules’. The word ‘kidnapping’ was also used, and the governing body awarded Nigeria three points and three goals calling the host’s actions inhumane. 15: England haven’t appointed an Englishman for the appointment of team manager. After looking at the extremely strong candidate list; Potter, Carsley, Howe, Warnock, Allardyce, Dyce, Edwards; they decided on German Thomas Tuchel, sending social media and tabloids alike into a xenophobic meltdown,

Good/Bad

Good RVN. what a man. Titanic Plum Porter Dunham Massey Altrincham Market Manchester keeping £2 buses Night buses running as far as Bolton Little bars in Porto and Kadikoy 25/05/2024: Thanks Erik New Cure material Onana (There. I’ve said it) Onana double save against the Turks . Interim Manager bounce Portuguese Pasteis De Natas Hojlund vs Brentford The Wild Robot The new Jack White album Casemiro v Leicester Blossoms Having a succession plan and carrying it out swiftly and (seemingly) without a hiccup. Seeing how much the other night meant to Ruud. Scoring five times in one match (and it could have been more). Chiellini’s pride wearing a Keane 16 shirt. The instant mood change preLeicester game with EtH gone. There was actual optimism. Ruud looking smooth on the touchline. Morrissey and Graham Nash giving big donations to save Salford Lads club The Adidas gear coming out last few months. Been really good and marked step up. Pastel de nata. Best thing that’s come out of Portugal since… well, ever.

Candy apple red fender telecasters. UWS Quiz — (doing the quiz with a load of random lads half of which don’t know one another after the Brentford match) Springsteen tickets at Co-Op Live Viennese whirls The Maccabees reforming Putting EtH (and us) out of his misery Chido Obi-Martin, a centre forward in the United under 18 side. Looks a real handful. Spurs away in the league cup. Big allocation. London. And away.

Bad The weird obsession with the Ballon d’or. It’s a team game. most of the players are shit and Patrice Evra going out of his way to annoy me. Northern Rail still using fax Job Market Buses at FT randomly stopping Asset stripping NHS waiting times Cuts to 5 Live and Asian Network news The death of a good euro away end. Turkish authorities and police, Ratcliffe’s penny pinching ruining the one effective ticketing system we had. VAR, VAR and VAR Scrapping Euro collections

Ever growing OT Turnstile queues (25 min vs Brentford for tier2 Stretford end ) Dutch pancakes Adults in Halloween gear Interim Manager Bounce Costly managerial flip flopping Madrid’s no show at Ballon D’or. Grow up Being constantly inundated with America’s election bullshit. kids who don’t say thank you for Halloween sweets

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