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HOW WAS IT FOR YOU? December 2: Politics and football don’t mix we’re told, though you can find any number of examples of the sporting authorities making their own rules to suit themselves, which almost always revolve around lining their own pockets. So if someone has a belief and that doesn’t fit the current paradigm? Is Ipswich Town captain Sam Morsy entitled to decline to wear the rainbow armband if he believes his own beliefs are not in line with those of all the rainbow? And is it any different from Palace’s Marc Guehi – who wrote “I love Jesus” on his armband – when Morsy’s views are that the rainbow doesn’t accord with him due to his “religious beliefs”? It is also claimed that United players stood by Noussair Mazraoui, who didn’t wear their specially designed rainbow jackets, because he would have stood alone had he been the only one not sporting it. All players will have their views, political and religious, and to deny them agency based on those beliefs is discriminatory… and particularly so if some of the most homophobic of views are held in places where the footballing authorities are happy to stage tournaments. It seems they are more than willing to turn a blind eye to homophobia if there are handsome rewards available. 4: “What are the tactics tonight boss?” – “Give them as many corners as possible, we’ll be fine.” Arsenal 2 Manchester United 0. 7: Our thoughts go to Michail Antonio, who suffers a horrendous car accident, leaving his life on the line and his career hanging in the balance. At Old Trafford, Forest take all three points. 8: Dan Ashworth has left the building. Despite us waiting months for him to join, and him only doing so on 1 July after months of tending his garden, he has been sacked. Well, he left by “mutual consent”. So sacked. Dan having overseen our £200m summer spend on Leny Yoro, Manuel Ugarte, Joshua Zirkzee, Matthijs de Ligt and Noussair Mazraoui is said to have not wanted Amorim as boss, instead championing Gareth Southgate. But when that was off Good/Bad Good Manchester now being in control of its own bus network. Amorim talking the talk. Amad’s goal vs city. Those last three mins at city. Random blokes hugging and partying during the lock-in at city. No feeling like it. Pigs in blankets. The National live in Rome album. Czech beer. Czech goulash. Czech sausages. The performance at Anfield. The 115 3007 192 banner away at Plzen & city. FC United approaching their 20th anniversary. The BBC’s adaptation of The Mirror and the Light. Fontaines DC gig – best in years. Hojlund’s second goal vs Plzen. Empty £66 seats vs Forest. Disney: Vogue in the 90s. Latest issues of UWS and Red News selling out despite the Mancunian rain. Football over Christmas (despite some of the results). Cheap Mandarin Orange Aldi Irish Cream. Long “bench” football coats. Traitors. After Eight mints (nostalgic one). Cheese. Christmas presents that you actually wanted. Non-league attendances. Factory International as a concert venue. Paul McCartney at the Beswick Arena. Maguire staying. Krakow. Nights drawing out again. Michael Palin doc on Nigeria. Ugarte looking a player. Kobbie back and regaining sharpness. Bad January. Certain players not earning their money while staff are being made redundant. Amorim not yet walking the walk. Two goals conceded directly from a corner in a week. Everything else. The first 30 minutes v Newcastle. Second 45 minutes v Wolves. 90 minutes v Bournemouth. Digital tickets, dynamic QR codes and being forced to use an official app. Take Me Home as an “anthem”. Fuck o ff. So-called supporters jeering players and leaving early. Those divs dressed as Christmas trees at Eastlands. The anti-Rashford banner at Tottenham.
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UNITED WE STAND 354 | 5 The incessant fucking rain. The canal breach at Little Bollington. INEOS’s penny pinching/decisionmaking. The “Lionel Messi World Club Cup”. Saudi 2034 World Cup. MUFC resembling broken Britain – those at the bottom pay and suffer for mistakes at the top. Far-fetched relegation talk… Having a cold. To boo or taboo? Bottom half at New Year. Cars that break down. Cadbury’s Hot Chocolate shortage. 23,000 emails in your inbox. Boxing Day sales. Them looking like they’ll win the league. Defending corners. Taking corners. Cutting off funding to both the foundation and the association of former players. From the regulars on the Groundside board at uwsonline.com Mad Cyril From the jubilation of the late, late show away at city to complete shell- shock at how dire we are in the ensuing weeks. The optimism around securing one of the best young managers in Europe seemed to be evaporating game by game. We knew he would need time and it might get worse before it gets better… but this bad? The most frustrating aspect of Erik ten Hag’s tenure was his inability to learn from mistakes, repeating the same ones week in week out. Leading us to question what were they doing in training, and how things like conceding the cut back goals every game kept happening. This has now become conceding from corners. You would have hoped that happening twice in one game at Arsenal would put an end to it. It has happened so many times since it’s almost comical. Actually, conceding two within a week at Spurs and Wolves that went directly in is mind-blowing. And, of course, as we have such little attacking threat and fire so many blanks, then mistakes such as these are so costly. Maybe that’s why teams pile so many players forward against us at set pieces… they don’t need many players back to deal with our increasingly toothless attacks. The Wolves game was the low point of the season for me. We were as bad, worse possibly, at home to Liverpool and Spurs, but they were at what we all saw as the end of Ten Hag. This is the new regime. Our new manager bounce didn’t last very long did it? If Wolves was the grimmest, Spurs in the League Cup was the most frustrating. What seemed like a second string, selected in the competition we had most chance of winning, seemed to kill any momentum we had gained by beating city a few days earlier. I still have some optimism for Amorim – that once he and his new coaching staff have asserted their influence we will begin to see improvements. He hasn’t shied away from tough decisions so far and has definitely given all players a fair chance to show him if they are up to it. Most aren’t, unfortunately. Add to this the Rashford situation (and hopefully, to a lesser extent, the Garnacho one), plus our lack of any fit left-footed defenders, Mount injured again just as he was showing some form, players being booed and subbed off after just half an hour. Dan Ashworth leaving, funding cuts to the ex-players’ charity and the foundation. Christ, the ground is even infested with mice! It’s all a bit miserable at Old Trafford right now and I genuinely don’t see it getting better any time soon. Let’s hope Ruben Amorim does. the table, he was part of trusting Ten Hag with another season, and the recruitment of those players clearly doesn’t fit with Amorim’s set-up. 9: With the hearing into city’s 115 charges now over, as we thought, there will no longer be 115 charges. Got away with it? No, there’s now 130, as more were revealed. Now, none of us think that anything will come of the charges – it’ll be appealed and there’ll end up being a sportswash of some kind; a punitive fine akin to one of us losing fifty pence down the sofa. However we all “know”, and any talk of city being one of the teams of this century or any will always be tarnished, and Guardiola’s reputation as a coach will always be accompanied by an asterisk. Unless, of course, the unthinkable happens and justice is done. Lance Armstrong? And on the subject of drugs, the PGMOL have sacked referee David Coote with immediate effect. It’s not surprising – the evidence of drug taking during a tournament he was officiating in appeared conclusive. But do we really think Coote is a one-off? And with referees taking money from sources in the Middle East for “friendly games” – at rates higher than their usual hourly rate – and those Middle East countries directly owning Premier League clubs, maybe there should be a complete investigation into all referees. From where we are looking, there are a lot of questions. 11: Saudi Arabia have been awarded the World Cup for 2034 as gulf money, we’re told, has transformed the Premier League. 12: Our European adventure stumbles on with a win at the Struncovy Sady Stadium, named after war hero Emil Strunc. 13: Thomas Tuchel’s England will face Serbia, Albania, Latvia and Andorra. Serbia and Albania will be interesting… 15: We beat city at the Etihad as their fall continues. They’re still above us, and will remain so. But their collapse in the last nine games – from being top to taking just five points from 27 – is questionable. 17: Mykhailo Mudryk has been suspended after testing positive for the drug meldonium. Why would he take meldonium? Is he not well? After all, it’s used in the treatment of coronary artery disease and chronic

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HOW WAS IT FOR YOU?

December 2: Politics and football don’t mix we’re told, though you can find any number of examples of the sporting authorities making their own rules to suit themselves, which almost always revolve around lining their own pockets. So if someone has a belief and that doesn’t fit the current paradigm? Is Ipswich Town captain Sam Morsy entitled to decline to wear the rainbow armband if he believes his own beliefs are not in line with those of all the rainbow? And is it any different from Palace’s Marc Guehi – who wrote “I love Jesus” on his armband – when Morsy’s views are that the rainbow doesn’t accord with him due to his “religious beliefs”? It is also claimed that United players stood by Noussair Mazraoui, who didn’t wear their specially designed rainbow jackets, because he would have stood alone had he been the only one not sporting it. All players will have their views, political and religious, and to deny them agency based on those beliefs is discriminatory… and particularly so if some of the most homophobic of views are held in places where the footballing authorities are happy to stage tournaments. It seems they are more than willing to turn a blind eye to homophobia if there are handsome rewards available. 4: “What are the tactics tonight boss?” – “Give them as many corners as possible, we’ll be fine.” Arsenal 2 Manchester United 0. 7: Our thoughts go to Michail Antonio, who suffers a horrendous car accident, leaving his life on the line and his career hanging in the balance. At Old Trafford, Forest take all three points. 8: Dan Ashworth has left the building. Despite us waiting months for him to join, and him only doing so on 1 July after months of tending his garden, he has been sacked. Well, he left by “mutual consent”. So sacked. Dan having overseen our £200m summer spend on Leny Yoro, Manuel Ugarte, Joshua Zirkzee, Matthijs de Ligt and Noussair Mazraoui is said to have not wanted Amorim as boss, instead championing Gareth Southgate. But when that was off

Good/Bad

Good Manchester now being in control of its own bus network. Amorim talking the talk. Amad’s goal vs city. Those last three mins at city. Random blokes hugging and partying during the lock-in at city. No feeling like it. Pigs in blankets. The National live in Rome album. Czech beer. Czech goulash. Czech sausages. The performance at Anfield. The 115 3007 192 banner away at Plzen & city. FC United approaching their 20th anniversary. The BBC’s adaptation of The Mirror and the Light. Fontaines DC gig – best in years. Hojlund’s second goal vs Plzen. Empty £66 seats vs Forest. Disney: Vogue in the 90s. Latest issues of UWS and Red News selling out despite the Mancunian rain. Football over Christmas (despite some of the results). Cheap Mandarin Orange Aldi Irish Cream. Long “bench” football coats. Traitors. After Eight mints (nostalgic one). Cheese. Christmas presents that you actually wanted. Non-league attendances. Factory International as a concert venue.

Paul McCartney at the Beswick Arena. Maguire staying. Krakow. Nights drawing out again. Michael Palin doc on Nigeria. Ugarte looking a player. Kobbie back and regaining sharpness.

Bad January. Certain players not earning their money while staff are being made redundant. Amorim not yet walking the walk. Two goals conceded directly from a corner in a week. Everything else. The first 30 minutes v Newcastle. Second 45 minutes v Wolves. 90 minutes v Bournemouth. Digital tickets, dynamic QR codes and being forced to use an official app. Take Me Home as an “anthem”. Fuck o ff. So-called supporters jeering players and leaving early. Those divs dressed as Christmas trees at Eastlands. The anti-Rashford banner at Tottenham.

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