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Twenty years of mismanagement, greed, distracted, clueless decision mak- ing, lurching from one football management style to another as middle management get appointments way above their capabilities, as they then actually boast that playing performance doesn’t really matter, all leads to this. And this, is a complete and utter mess, perhaps worse than we feared after the takeover. It just took a while to get here. Whilst Ineos mis-step, badly, aiming low not high, the real reason for where we are is clear; the debt, costs and utter shambles that Utd’s finances are now in is down to the unmentionables apart from all us screaming it for two decades long; the Glazers and their disastrous Glazernomics. Statter gun, led to scattered shite at whatever they touched once Fergie’s genius had de- parted. And here we fucking are. No end in sight to the mess. As what Dion Fanning labelled the “polit- buro of bullshit” now seem incapable of laying at their door who is actually to blame as if it were a Scottish play. Jonathan Wilson in the Guardian wrote: “while those lower down the pyramid are squeezed and any shred of employer generosity stripped away, the elite go on bungling, wasting mil- lions and being rewarded for it.” HIGHER PRICES, LONGER QUEUES. PIC @CHORLTONWHEELIE Manchester United finding new ways to sink lower should no longer surprise us, but approaching Southampton at home preying we win with a heavy dose of apprehension certainly feels like a new low in this ongoing shitshow. You could select any manner of options for the ire of this column - millions spunked on players not capable, mismanagement of epic proportions high and low, the changing face of OT as new fans are chased, and old timers chased away, and trying to redress those years of Glazernomics by aiming down not up (as Petro Jim belches out to Andy the long trodden bollocks that the Gimps are “they’re genuinely nice people... genuine fans of the club. I really like them as people”), with everyone on the inside afraid to say out loud what we know, Macbeth. But I'm going to focus, with some fury as I hammer in disgust at my keyboard right now, on one of the worst club decisions in my lifetime; made by new era meet old era, which reminds me of that Oscar Wilde quote: “In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it. The last is much the worst, the last is a real tragedy!” It’s amazing to think it’s only eight weeks ago that, despite sadness at Erik’s tenure ending by ultimately not working out, despite two great trophy day outs (which mocking rivals can’t even match us for during our pisstake era), the mood was lifted with Amorim’s arrival. A real opportunity for the club, reeling from redundancies and pettiness, to go with the flow and fans desperate for long overdue silver linings. Instead Petro Jim went for the salmon approach, the Gimps were not questioned or asked for some of their ill gotten gains returned, and Ineos made a total fuck-up of the good feeling by making momentous mis-steps like a drunk pisscan caught on dashcam. 1996 AND ERIC MANIA IS AS BIG AS EVER, PIC KARL HANSSENS I mean, we’re very good at pr and portraying all is well when it is not, and on twitter make believe, the club account - ahh, that’s nice - praised the ongoing rank and file support after Plzen by suggesting: “Best in the world - Eternally grateful for your sup- port, Reds. Safe journey home ” Aheart.Theydo care! And after Arsenal in the league: “Thank you for your support in north London — it never goes unno- ticed.” Clearly it does, as this came at the exact point away from social media bullshit filters, the re- ality was United were targeting that very support, and worse still, its very future generations. I can’t get PAGE 4
page 5
my head around it. For such relative little return, they’ve made a massive cock up that’ll cost more. just carry on as normal. I’m alright Jack. But I’m not alright with it, at all. No idea who the fuck would come up with the figure itself, bar an accountant, but £66 plucked as a figure out of the air is very apt hellish thinking. Imagine being so utterly out of touch in a room where that got suggested, and passed through rather than told to go fuck itself. And this wasn’t the culture of Woodward, nor Arnold, though of course Ed’s dickhead statement about: “Playing performance doesn't really have a meaningful impact on what we can do on the commercial side of the business.” was exactly the shite that has led us here, but the supposed new “best in class’ who will take us back to the promised land, but instead are acting like unruly dickheads and even fighting amongst themselves as William Prunier almost lasted as long here as Dan Ashworth. Incredulously, it summing up the post Fergie era of Utd that they didn’t attempt this heimlich manoeuvre when we’re top, joy aplenty, but when we’re utter, utter shite and many parents are having to convince their kids as it is to go, that it’s a good idea to ‘experience’ 90 minutes of torture or boredom. Headlines again report Old Trafford has a mice infestation. Nah, you got that wrong, it’s rats. The crass line to Andy about wanting to charge as much/more than Fulham - “I don’t think it makes sense that a Manchester United ticket should cost less than a ticket to see Fulham.” was a toxic mix of greed and ignorance from a man who has spent far too long supping G&T’s in his pub off the King’s Road that this is normality; a toxic stinking fragrance we’ve already drowned in since ‘05, added with an extra whiff of his own ego and arse licking acolytes. What a mess. But still no common sense u-turn arrived like I hoped. I do not use the term evil lightly but this is what this new policy is. That it arrived midweek, rushed and hurried, hidden in long emails as new terms suggested the ignominy of just how awful this is as they attempted to rush it through as if we wouldn’t notice. Unlike say my era of vintage Reds where we only had Utd to obsess about growing up; we had a sum total of about 10 things as options as kids in our lifetime to do, not the millions of (mostly brain- dead, granted) opportunities and focus and diver- sions, that kids now have. A working class local community already ignored, has now been priced out; parents unable to afford wanting to connect with their kids as their parents did with them, will find out as much as United will that this is simply not a switch or support you can claw back when we’re so shit the club are desperate for them - they’d have moved on. It’s almost laughably absurd but instead of tears I’m raging - I think we should have at the very least a 66 minute walk out imminently - the very future support they need to rely on they have potentially discarded, going all in like some coked up punter in a falling down casino that it’ll pay off replacing them by new- bie merchants eager to pay shitloads for their Old Trafford ‘experience’. Fuck traditions, generations, families, connections and communities, what kid/parents at MUFC is about, the out of touch Petro Jim who couldn’t even be arsed to make the journey from London to Manchester before he tax fucked off to Monaco wants families to pay the debts rather than the owners who are so great they’ve leeched out billions. Google, Machiavellianism. It’ll never affect my relationship with you; or my Utd that I see at its core and in its community, but I will admit it’s affected my equilibrium with all things Utd ever since I heard about it. It affects me more than even results. A willful ignorance and depravity to make this move, and then they want everyone to Who’d have thought here was another suit coming in (and who never remember their first game... funny that...) talking bullshit. Spoiler - all of us... “That's what the club’s all about, it’s the fans really. I’ve always said that we don’t own the club. These shareholders, myself and the Glazer family, we don’t own the club. The true owners of the club are the fans, the community, and we’re merely guardians or stewards for a period of time of the club. We don’t own the club. The club is a community asset. And so it’s all about the fans really, and what the fans want, because [what’s] really, really important to those people who live in Manchester and go to the game every week, is they want to see the team winning, because that’s so enjoyable for everybody. And we recognise that. So it’s all about the fans.” Pr-tastic words when he first came in, from the union busting, tax playing billionaire who added yet more shit to the £66 flames by targetting MUDSA, the Foundation and the Association of Former players. I mean, it’s so utterly mental a thought process no wonder Avram takes dogs for walks in a fucking pram. When United first started targetting what we had daftly previously thought of our own Season Tickets, but instead lectured and insulted us with terms and conditions that would make Leo Tolstoy recoil at their word count, along with threats and condescending tones about how many games we dared choose to attend after paying in advance with our own money, some fans backed them that this was all about United caring how many empty seats there were at some home games. Was it fuck! It was a power grab, the dynamic had changed from what we had thought of as our tickets, to them telling us they were in fact theirs to do as they please. And a ticket to someone else, is worth more than us old time moaners. The end result is fear, jobsworths and force - you dare be ill to miss a few games in your 80s, you PAGE 5

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Twenty years of mismanagement, greed, distracted, clueless decision mak- ing, lurching from one football management style to another as middle management get appointments way above their capabilities, as they then actually boast that playing performance doesn’t really matter, all leads to this. And this, is a complete and utter mess, perhaps worse than we feared after the takeover. It just took a while to get here. Whilst Ineos mis-step, badly, aiming low not high, the real reason for where we are is clear; the debt, costs and utter shambles that Utd’s finances are now in is down to the unmentionables apart from all us screaming it for two decades long; the Glazers and their disastrous Glazernomics. Statter gun, led to scattered shite at whatever they touched once Fergie’s genius had de- parted. And here we fucking are. No end in sight to the mess. As what Dion Fanning labelled the “polit- buro of bullshit” now seem incapable of laying at their door who is actually to blame as if it were a Scottish play. Jonathan Wilson in the Guardian wrote: “while those lower down the pyramid are squeezed and any shred of employer generosity stripped away, the elite go on bungling, wasting mil- lions and being rewarded for it.”

HIGHER PRICES, LONGER QUEUES. PIC @CHORLTONWHEELIE

Manchester United finding new ways to sink lower should no longer surprise us, but approaching Southampton at home preying we win with a heavy dose of apprehension certainly feels like a new low in this ongoing shitshow. You could select any manner of options for the ire of this column - millions spunked on players not capable, mismanagement of epic proportions high and low, the changing face of OT as new fans are chased, and old timers chased away, and trying to redress those years of Glazernomics by aiming down not up (as Petro Jim belches out to Andy the long trodden bollocks that the Gimps are “they’re genuinely nice people... genuine fans of the club. I really like them as people”), with everyone on the inside afraid to say out loud what we know, Macbeth.

But I'm going to focus, with some fury as I hammer in disgust at my keyboard right now, on one of the worst club decisions in my lifetime; made by new era meet old era, which reminds me of that Oscar Wilde quote: “In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it. The last is much the worst, the last is a real tragedy!”

It’s amazing to think it’s only eight weeks ago that, despite sadness at Erik’s tenure ending by ultimately not working out, despite two great trophy day outs (which mocking rivals can’t even match us for during our pisstake era), the mood was lifted with Amorim’s arrival. A real opportunity for the club, reeling from redundancies and pettiness, to go with the flow and fans desperate for long overdue silver linings. Instead Petro Jim went for the salmon approach, the Gimps were not questioned or asked for some of their ill gotten gains returned, and Ineos made a total fuck-up of the good feeling by making momentous mis-steps like a drunk pisscan caught on dashcam.

1996 AND ERIC MANIA IS AS BIG AS EVER, PIC KARL HANSSENS

I mean, we’re very good at pr and portraying all is well when it is not, and on twitter make believe, the club account - ahh, that’s nice - praised the ongoing rank and file support after Plzen by suggesting: “Best in the world - Eternally grateful for your sup- port, Reds. Safe journey home ” Aheart.Theydo care! And after Arsenal in the league: “Thank you for your support in north London — it never goes unno- ticed.” Clearly it does, as this came at the exact point away from social media bullshit filters, the re- ality was United were targeting that very support, and worse still, its very future generations. I can’t get PAGE 4

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