WHY I'M GLAD I'M NOT A RED

Clutching their precious eight packs of Stella Artois, the belching Stone Island clad overweight monstrosities lurch around the corner of Chester Road and Sir Matt Busby Way. They stuff themselves with congealed gristle posing as burgers, with chips of no more nutritious content than the polystyrene tray they sit in. A clutch of agitated youths pass around a Lambert and Butler cigarette, watching and waiting, on the periphery of the mob, currently numbering three hundred who after guzzling cheap lager since 11am are now entertaining the masses by torching an Argentina shirt. Cheers go up as anonymous heroes in the eye of the storm hurl bottles towards the traffic on Chester Road, the whooping almost drowning out the consequent shattering of glass across the bonnet of a passing Range Rover.

Stood on a wall just above this mass of writhing, spitting lizards is a scrawny, spotty, angry man, no more than 20, frantically waving a cardboard cut out red shirt crudely daubed with "TRAITOR 32" on the back in Tippex. A Blue Peter badge surely looms for this talented artist. The irony of how Tevez came to be at Old Trafford today in a blue jersey would be forever lost on this sorry figure.

Welcome to Old Trafford, everyone.

It's difficult for me to compile anything but a heavily subjective piece on this utterly unloveable club and its fans. After twenty five years watching football, my caustic views on United are scarcely likely to change any time soon. That, however, isn't a good enough reason to keep them to myself. Stray reds who have made it this far will already be putting their crayons down to tap out "34 YEARS" and other sleights of wit, no doubt other slurs on the sanity of Mark Hughes, City, their fans in general and the quality of the team.

Whatever they say, and they can even throw in their 18 leagues, 3 European Cups and so on, I couldn't spare the merest shred of love for Manchester United if my life depended on it. Some days I get out of bed an hour earlier just to detest them a little longer. And if United were playing an alien XI with the future of planet Earth depending on a reds victory, I'd still be in the away wearing a green scarf cheering for the martians.

The question is, do we really hate them, or do we pity them? Taking a saunter down Matt Busby Way, your gaze is met by the vacant eyes of tragic lost souls who have had their brains slowly sucked away through a red and white Nike straw. The one dimensionality embraces all age groups, genders and classes. The Doc's Red Army veterans still dreaming of clashes with the ICF in the 1970's, now approaching retirement age yet compelled to gather with purpose on street corners with their cans of Carling, dressed in their grandson's Lacoste and Rockport cast-offs. The head to toe Nike and AIG human billboards. The angry young men and women who actually invest considerable sums to have their red shirts printed with "18 TIMES AND THAT'S A FACT!" on the back.

Where do these people come from? It's staring me in the face - these basket cases actually DO exist.

These people can't choose their level of intellect or appearance in most cases. But they can choose their football club. So what kind of fayre do these unfortunates choose to entertain themselves with?

Sunday gave us the opportunity to examine the phenomenon at close quarters.

Let's assess the difference between United and City. United have won over twenty major trophies since the beginning of the Premier League, in the most successful spell in their history. Built on solid foundations of continuity with both management and playing personnel, as well as substantial funds when necessary, their rise to to the top has been a swift and prolonged one. This has resulted in the swelling of their support from gates well under 30,000 twenty years ago to 75,000+ today. City on the other hand, have lurched from crisis to disaster under a string of failed managerial appointments, instability at boardroom level and ineptitude on the field in that time.

Until now. The average tattooed knuckled red is still crowing at the events of Sunday. But find me a United fan of reasonable intellect (a tricky assignment, I know) and ask them are they genuinely happy with their teams performance at weekend? Alex Ferguson, who would have nimbly dodged the post match TV interview had Owen not scored, claims it could have been six or seven "zero". Pardon, Alex?


Aside of the two gifts (thanks Ben, thanks Rio) presented, did he miss Bellamy's first goal and the near misses by Wright Phillips and Tevez? Or is that just the kind of media that the non-thinking United fan demands and thrives on, and which the likes of Ferguson are only too happy to feed them on an intravenous drip?

We'll say no more about Owen's goal - whether the whistle should have gone before or not, City should have marked up, or better still, been at the other end to try and bag a winner themselves. United will claim the bragging rights and history reads that City lost but this was a warning shot across the United bow. Take away that injury time goal and United will look back on a very hollow error-strewn performance against a side missing Robinho and Adebayor, which would be heavily punished against the established sides, both at home and in Europe.

City, still a work in progress, will continue the upward spiral. The whiff of progress hangs in the air around the blues like the scent of a freshly mown lawn. It's the aroma of something far less savoury that pollutes the atmosphere at Old Trafford. Meanwhile, as we leave Planet Glazer behind once more, you realise why you'd just never be a Red. Picking our way through the ankle deep chip wrapper and trampled beer cans back to civilisation, you leave behind the tragic fashion victims as they lurch back to their supporters club coaches, struggling along with their Megastore bags brim full of overpriced tat. They head back home to provincial towns around the country, many of which have perfectly good football league clubs crying out for a little more local support. It sickens me that so many of these people are unable to resist their urge to attach themselves limpet-like to United and let their local club struggle.

However great their team may be, however all conquering and rich, United can't buy your affection or mine. Love of a good football club can't be bought at any price - and my soul isn't up for sale like the 73,000 rather sorry individuals who've committed themselves to worshipping at this unholy altar.

46,000 like minded fans supporting a club that's won nothing in over a generation, with such illustrious neighbours on the other side of the fence, can't all be wrong.



This article was written by Davejp1973 and was originally posted on BBC 6-0-6. It was removed without explanation in accordance with the BBC's policy of stifling independant opinion.

Just What We Needed

Sometimes help comes in the most unexpected ways and the last two games may prove a blessing to Manchester City.

After last seasons takeover, the media went into hyper-drive with their condemnation of City's new found wealth. The tabloids invented rumours and printed such blatent lies that the club had to threaten legal action against the Sun on two seperate occasions. The Mirror gleefully printed a story about the firm that supplied the club's in-house TV service having financial problems under the headline "Just when things couldn't get any worse for City". The serious papers were more subtle and tried, with partial success, to lead City fans to expect a trophy in Year One. When that didn't materialise, they came down on Mark Hughes like a ton of bricks.

The effect on the fans was explosive. Gentle Saturday night debate in City pubs turned to fist-fights. The fans started to split into Hughes In and Hughes out camps, inter-fan squabbling on comment pages turned into vitriol, members on one forum were trying to organise an anti-Hughes demonstration to coincide with the visit of Khaldoon Mubarak. The City Of Manchester Stadium had an unpleasant, dark atmosphere during the cold months of January and February.

Summer came and sanity returned. Players were moved on and a large amount of money was spent on their replacements. The season got off to a tremendous start, then came the Arsenal game. The events of that match have been well, if not over-documented. Adebayor was banned and the media assumed the morality of Quakers. Britain may be a member of the G8 but the mind-set of the football watching public seems to be trapped in revolutionary France. If a guillotine had been available, Emmanual Adebayour's head would probably be lying in a basket at this moment.

The events of the Manchester Derby have now been entered into the annals of history. The FA rule book was specially re-written for the occasion with a new chapter on time keeping procedure. Players were pelted with coins, Gary Neville danced in front of the City fans after taunting them all game and a fan ran on the pitch to insult Craig Bellemy who replied with little more than a love-tap. As it stands, Craig Bellemy has now been made the villain of the piece, nicely deflecting attention away from provocative celebrations, coin throwing fans and totally inept refereeing.

The effect on Manchester City Football Club - and by that I mean the whole entity, from boardroom through staff to supporters has been electric. Never in my time as a fan has everyone been galvanised into such a state of siege mentality. We stuck together when we were in the 3rd tier of English football but this is different. Despite an onslaught from the media, the FA and fans of just about every other club in the country, we are still in the top 4 with a game in hand and we're not going to give that up lightly. The divisions of last season have hopefully disappeared and there is a new level of assertiveness from the management, the players and judging by their reactions at the last two matches, the fans.

Throw what you want at us. Not only can we take it, we will thrive on it.

It's All gone Quiet

It's been a reasonably pleasant day in Manchester, most people would have gone about their normal daily business and Greater Manchester Police have another reported crime on their casebooks.

Whilst the print media, the bookmakers and most other people not connected with Manchester City have been holding a kangaroo court to try Emmanual Adebayour in his absence, the local constabulary are dealing with a complaint about Robin Van Persie's post goal celebration. The eyes of the footballing world are on Adebayour for running past 16,000 of his own fans, arms aloft before sinking to his knees in front of a collection of London based racists. A smile had spread across his face the moment the ball hit the net and it was still there 20 seconds and 100 yards later as the Arsenal fans pelted him with bottles and seats. The smile was sadly missing from Gary Neville's face a couple of years earlier when he confronted the Liverpool fans with a display of badge kissing and air punching to celebrate somebody else's goal.

Van Persie 'celebrated' in a somewhat different way. After scoring an important equaliser, he ran towards the City fans and delivered an assortment of gestures and profanities so obvious and foul that most media clips have had to be edited. Despite the fact the goal was scored at the South Stand where the Arsenal fans were contained, he chose to confront City supporters in a section of the stadium often reserved for families. The FA have said nothing, the referee has not reported the incident and the 4th official was a matter of yards from the outrage. It's a sad state of affairs when a fan has to report the matter to the police before any action is taken.

It's now dark in both Manchester and London and the FA still remain tight-lipped. Maybe there is a procession of grey suited men, marching slowly from Soho Square with burning crosses aloft ready to announce the fate of Adebayour at an hour designed not to inconvenience the headline writers of tomorrow mornings papers. It was them after all that have acted as judge, jury and executioner is the whole one-sided affair.

Trial By Media

As a City fan, to me Saturdays game against Arsenal will go down as a sound victory against one of the title contenders/pretenders. The media have different ideas and two other incidents are taking centre-stage. The mob is being fired up into a frenzy akin to a Hammer Horror film of the 1970's. Burning torches are being distributed ready for the indignant towns-people to march on East Manchester. Graham Poll has been declared "Witchfinder General".

Let's just concentrate on one incident here, Adebayour's celebration. By now most people will have seen the Togolise striker score City's third goal with an awesome header following some nifty play on the counter-attack. Ade (sorry, I cant get my head round 'Manu' as a nickname) set off on a run of Usain Bolt proportions coupled with Jessie Owens poignancy and headed straight for the Arsenal contigent, a riot ensued.

"Adebayor, Adebayor, "his dad washes elephants, his mother's a whore." Sung to the tune of Sloop John B are the lyrics that the Arsenal fans had been singing for much of the game. They rendered it with such gusto that I, and the several families that sit near me could hear it in Block 201. For those unfamiliar with the layout of the City Of Manchester Stadium, that's just about in line to where Adebayour started his dash. Safe to say that if we could hear it, sure as hell the player himself could.

The explosion of anger from the Arsenal faithful would have been laughable if it wasn't for the fact that several stewards were attacked. In fact the vision of middle aged men who are no strangers to McDonald's Happy Meals and don't overspend at the barbers was actually quite disturbing. 'Gooners' like to think they're the gentry of football support, these scenes showed that they are anything but.

At the time of writing, Emmanual Adebayor has not been charged with any breach of FA rules. Despite this, The Mirror are asking readers on an online poll to vote on how many games he should be banned for. The Times usually runs a daily article on City because everyday they think of something negative to write. They are telling us with authority that Adebayour will receive a 4 match ban. They are even suggesting that it should be fast-tracked so Ade will miss the Derby. The Daily Mail, the 3rd member of the Unholy Trinity of newspapers that are openly anti - City are running no less than 5 seperate articles on the club today, Graham Poll, who would have probably given Ade 5 yellow cards is in full cry and deems it as serious as the Van Persie incident. I won't comment on any of the incidents that involve the Dutchman until charges are made.

I don't remember any of this furore when Gary Neville made his vastly more inciteful approach to the Liverpool fans at Old Trafford, whatsmore he hadn't even scored the goal. So Manu should get a Man U style fine for this particular incident. The offending Arsenal fans should be identified and prosecuted.

Emmanual Adebayor may have upset 3,000 racist Arsenal fans with his joyous run but he delighted 44,000 City fans. It's our stadium and that should have some bearing on whatever punishment the FA feel is appropriate.

French Go Claim Crazy

Few of us would turn down the chance to make some easy money and French football clubs are no exception. After FIFA decided that Chelsea acted wrongly in their aquisition of Kakuta, it seems everyone wants a piece of the pie.

Although it's hard to hear yourself think above the din made by fans of other clubs (and their chairmen) as a wave of new found morality sweeps the football world, let's take a moment to study the facts.

Jérémy Hélan is a young Frenchman recruited to City's academy in February this year. He had just graduated from the Clairefontaine academy, which is a French version of Lilleshall, a kind of super academy designed to nuture young French talent. Hélan was basically a free agent as he wasn't contracted to any club. City approached the lad, received an International Transfer Certificate (ITC) from the French Football Federation and Jérémy became a City player.

Pierre Dreossi, the Rennes technical director then decided that things had gone horribly wrong for his club and lodged a complaint to FIFA. The grounds for this complaint was that Hélan had signed a pre-contract agreement with Rennes at the age of 13 and that agreement had been broken. The affair took on an Inspector Clouseauish mantel when no trace could be found of this agreement but the club are prepared to swear on the Eifel Tower that it existed.

The crux of the matter is that Jérémy Hélan is a very talented player and the real gripe for Rennes is not the fact they've been deprived of a useful defender but the idea that they've not been able to cash in on him on the international transfer market.

Although this is a FIFA matter, Michel Platini and his UEFA cohorts have been very vocal recently on the movement of young footballers across international boundries, Arsene Wenger was even accused of 'Trafficking Young People' - Sacre Bleu, there's an awful lot of Frenchmen involved in this saga.

So, in essence it boils down to City signing an out of contract player and Rennes screaming 'faux' because an agreement, not a contract, signed by a 13 year old child has not been honoured. We'll see how this one pans out but I can't see the Blues having too much to worry about. There are dark forces at work when it comes to English clubs at the moment but I can't see Rennes having a leg to stand on in this case.

Dunne and Cook

A nasty little PR battle is simmering at the moment between Richard Dunne and Garry Cook and it's not progressing in a way that will please City chairman, Khaldoon Al Mubarak.

Richard Dunne's career with City probably came to an end on a blustery Sunday last November. City were entertaining Spurs and after an entertaining start in which Robinho had given us the lead, Dunne horribly misjudged the ball letting in Darren Bent to equalise. Bad marking by the captain allowed Bent to score again and the afternoon turned into nightmare when the inept Mike Dean produced his second red card of the proceedings to dismiss Dunne after he had once again tangled with his nemesis - Darren Bent. A bad day for City and a horrorshow for Dunne.

Garry Cook informs us that he reads fan-forums and has even named his particular favourite. It's probable that he had read that particular forum during the following days and he would have witnessed an outpouring of rage and bile usually reserved for the most odious of sex offenders. Other fansites contained similar outbursts of disgruntlement though probably in a more constrained manner. This was probably the moment that Garry Cook decided that Manchester City and Richard Dunne should part company. Any lingering doubts would have been cast aside on a passionate evening in April when Dunne was dismissed during the UEFA Cup quarter-final against Hamburg. The presence of Khaldoon that evening would have done nothing to help his cause.

Dunne's career with City has already been well documented, four times Player Of The Year that includes a season when Nicolas Anelka was on City's books. Red cards and own goals are often subjects, accompanied by inaccurate statistics, that are part of any discussion concerning the amiable Irishman but o.g's are open to conjecture. To me, the epitome of an own goal was Diaby's classic for United against Arsenal, not instances when the ball skims the shin of a lunging defender who is making a last ditch attempt to prevent a goal. Dunney's inglorious record is written in stone - a couple were pearlers but the others were mainly down to freakish misfortune and will be accredited to a player desperately trying to avert danger when his co-defenders were nowhere to be seen.

Red cards should be treated as statistics and nothing else in most cases. The inconsistency of refereeing means dreadful challenges can go unpunished whilst an innocuous trip can result in a player seeing red, instances involving Shaun Wright-Philips and Paul Scholes last season spring to mind. Vinny Jones and Roy Keane got a plethora of red cards in their time, usually for actions bordering on thuggery - Richard Dunne could never be accused of that.

As Dunnes move to Aston Villa was approaching the moment of consummation, the deal hit an unexpected impasse with rumours coming out of City that the captain was holding out for a huge loyalty payment. Initially, I was disgusted at the thought of a Premier League footballer demanding money he wasn't entitled to off a club that had resurrected his career and employed him for 9 years. Two days after the transfer, I am beginning to see things in a different light. The fact that Richard Dunne has spoken out rather than just issue statements has added credence to his cause. The Dubliner, by all accounts is a likeable person, his post match interviews - even after memorable victories have been unassuming and bordering on shy. So when he speaks to the media about the secret phone calls to other clubs and broken promises about testimonials I, for one, will take notice and listen.

Anyway Richard Dunne is now an Aston Villa player and I will always hold him in high esteem. Although his departure was more or less inevitable, I wish it had been done in a more honourable way. If Garry Cook does 'listen to the fans' there's a good possibility that Micah Richards will follow and that would be pure folly. By all means listen to the fans Garry but leave footballing decisions to football people.

Why Harry Missed The Boat

The transfer deadline came and went and the excitement was minimal for most clubs. Despite the best attempts of Sky Sports News to whip the nation into a frenzy of expectation, one of the more interesting story's were the non-transfers of Martin Petrov and David Bentley.

When news broke on Monday night that the two players were in the process of exchanging clubs, most people assumed that someone had cranked up the City Transfer Bulldozer and the transfers were nothing more than a formality.

As it stood, Harry Redknapp looked certain to offload Bentley, a player that he had earlier informed us had no future at Spurs and had recently criticised on Match Of The Day for his drink-driving conviction.

Martin Petrov was less than happy with his current situation at the Blues. Injured whilst on international duty, Petrov missed the bulk of last season and his role had changed from nail-on starter to squad player. Petrov took this badly, a bit like someone awaking from a coma to find their partner had remarried and started a new family. Martin Petrov had been doubly unlucky, firstly to get injured and then to find out his replacement was Robinho, Britains most expensive footballer. Further evidence of the Bulgarians discontent was evident when he scored at the Nou Camp. As his team-mates attempted to kiss, hug and generally show their delight, the speedy wingman was intent on pointing to the name on his shirt. Maybe he was trying to announce his return, more likely he was advertising the fact he wanted out.

So in the land of theory, this should have been the most straight forward deal of the window. Tottenham had a player with no future at the club and City had a man who was, according to his agent "desperate to join Spurs".Surely everyone could meet at the Watford Gap service station, shake hands, exchange contracts, say hello, wave goodbye. No, Harry had to get clever.

City have been making headlines for their extravagent transfer activity for exactly one year and one day. This has deflected a lot of media attention away from Spurs who have spent something in the region of £180,000,000 over the last 2 years - if we're to believe the papers. Harry Redknapp thought he would try and recoup some of this by asking City for an extra £12 Million to smooth the deal through. It's rumoured that City offered a maximum of £8 Million. A stalemate was reached and the deal collapsed.

So as it stands City have retained a talented player who might yet have a future at the club if he sorts his attitude out. We also have Craig Bellemy who can play on the left should Robinho be rested/dropped/on holiday. On the right we have Shaun Wright-Phillips, wonderkid - Vladi Weiss and Craig Bellemy (again).

Spurs, on the other hand, have a player they don't want and an injured Luka Modric. City could never lose out on this deal but Harry was given a golden oppurtunity to resolve several problems for the Londoners. He tried to be smart and ended up being greedy. Not everything 'arry touches turns to gold.