Spring has sprung like Zebedee on crack, pipe down at the back ‘cos this May could be cack, though it might just be a belting craic. Not for the faint of heart-strings, knowhatImean, wack? Mancini and his robots are revved up for this semi-final. United must feel like the poor Japanese in the face of their punishment from the World Bank earthquake machine. Shake Man Sewer has unlimited beadage available to fund his little hobby horse. But don’t worry; we’re gonna sign Reina and Torres and the Qataris are buying us and Benzema, Schweinsteiger, De Gea, Banega, Rodwell, Sneijder and Kaka and Mourinho and – bollocks, I’ll have a cuppa and calm down. I’m sitting here, dithering like an alcoholic whippet, worrying about which component(s) of the treble we can afford to write off. There’s the League and Arsenal; could we really live with ourselves kissing goodbye to Number Nineteen? I think not. Then there’s the Champions League and Chelsea; can our Gibsonesque gimps put the pretenders in their place? Hard to say. Last, and by all means least, we have the FA Cup and the Bittermen; a devalued trophy we totally blew off in favour of the Intercontinental Cup after our ’99 treble, suddenly infused with meaning due to the bizarre fact that Manchester city have managed to beat Leicester, Notts County, Aston Villa (wow, Villa?!) and Reading on their way to their first semi-final since Albert Tatlock last got his end away. How horrible will it be if the Q2 whores edge us out at Wembley? I’ll never be able to utter the phrase, “when city beat us at Wembley…” ever. EVER. Granted, those words aren’t as difficult to say as “Bernard Breslaw”, “architrave” or “tundish”, with a straight face, but they are vile and without logic. In 1999 we flipped our middle finger at the FA and fucked off to Japan to beat Palmeiras 1-0 with a Roy Keane strike and Mark Bosnich minding the goal. Evergreen Ryan Giggs was Man of the Match as United became the first and only British team to win the trophy. But this year’s FA Cup has suddenly become important. Not because of the trophy itself, but because city are Chelsea Lite and as such must be battered on and off the pitch and sent home to their stinking hovels with welts, blisters, lacerations and piles. If our current squad of unstable crybabies, Amazonian cheekboners, Toltecs, beanpoles, French Action Figures, retirees, “clients”, sweet Transylvanians and shrunken-headed rapists fail to dispatch those blue cunts I will be fucking seething. Chelsea and Liverpool bullied us. If city do the same I may kill someone. Probably Darron Gibson, not because he’s crap, but ‘cos he spells his first name with an “o”, the annoying gobshite. Or maybe Michael Carrick. If he was a horse, they’d shoot him. As will I. Chris Smalling will help me dispose of the body. He’s proved very useful lately. I bet he can carry and dig with the best of ‘em. NOTE: I’ve just gone to Smalling’s Wikipedia page and discovered someone’s been pissing about. Here’s what it said: “Chris Smalling also had multiple trials with many County Cricket teams, but was considered too good to play for them, and opted to play football instead. He is widely considered the best centre-back in the world.” “And it wasn’t me, hand on heart; I’m on a second warning with Wiki and will be barred for life for a third. My assaults on the Michael Jackson and High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program pages put me in very hot water, so I’m on the straight and narrow these days. Bullying geek bastards. It’s their “time”, apparently.
Bullying is ugly and wrong, but sport is a physical contest and inevitably the big boys get to throw their weight about. We are seriously lacking in the weight throwing department these days. Nani’s serial humiliation at Hamford Fridge and ultimately Anfailed proved this beyond measure. Little Pea also comes in for too much stick and there’s no-one to watch his back. Even Rooney, as game as he is, seems to reserve most of his short-arsed venom for the officials rather than the David Luiz’s of this world. Then again, I can’t blame him; Luiz is proof there’s plenty of value in the market if you know where to fucking look. This bullying of United players by shitehawks like Gerrard and Ivanovic is painful to watch, but it might be on its way out. The fact that football has become a form of showbusiness may mean a shift downward in scale. Just like Hollywood actors are really miniatures of the characters they play (i.e. Harrison Ford is actually four foot nine and seven stone, but they make him look like a six foot hunk), footballers may soon be required to fulfil similar criteria. Nobody over five-three will be permitted to participate. HDTV and Max Factor will create a pop culture wonderland of little men who look awesome. Evra and Park will be the dominators come the titchy revolution. Tevez will be a raging beast. That midget feller who plays for Marseilles will be the new Messi- oh wait, Messi’s smaller than him. Either way, it’s the future. But until then Fergie needs to sign some big steamers who can sort it out in the middle. They say it’s the size of the fight in the dog that matters, but living in the States I’ve grudgingly come to admit that sometimes bigger is better. Mega and Meta. Macro and Micro. Two fractals in a modern sporting dichotomy. Giants versus elves. Football freakonomics bows down to physics at the end of the day, ‘cos 15 stone of bone, ligament and muscle trumps 10 of skin and bone. When Beckman became the bend it king and other set-piece specialists emerged, football took a step towards a more American approach. The game was dissected, butchered into clinical moves and zones. Having big guys in the engine room became imperative. Sure, football’s always had its centre-halves, but power and speed are now as important as heading ability and grit. Each player now serves a more defined function even as they’re expected to cover more ground. United are currently struggling with a jack-of-all-trades gaggle. Utility men like Rooney, the twins and O’Shea shuffled about the peripheries of a misshapen blob. Rooney’s work-rate and support skills have won matches, but his salary means either Chicharito or Berba must start on the bench. Now Tony V is back the pressure is off Roon and on the opposing defence. That’s the way, a-ha, a-ha, I like it. The novel formation Ferg fielded against Arsenal in the FA Cup was a stroke of genius, but we’re gonna need some steel against dirty bastards like Barry, De Jong and Kompany in this Wembley test. The latter is a square-headed cyborg, but even he couldn’t control Luiz at Chelsea recently, and Aleksandar Kolarov nearly snapped his foot off in a tackle with the onrushing Brazilian phenomenon. Sorry to be kissing Luiz’s arse a bit here, but WHY DIDN’T WE SIGN HIM? EH? Was it ever even a fucking rumour? Never mind, there’s always Sergio Canales if rumours are your thing. The truth is we just need a goalkeeper and two monsters in the centre of the park and we’re fandabbyfuckindozy. It could be worse; we could be bringing Peter Schmeichel out of retirement, a la Arsenal and Lehman. How embarrassing and strange is that? But enough about football. It’s shit.
Don’t get me wrong; “bigger is better” has its applications, but I’ve not turned into a dumbass yank. Anyone who’s been around competitive people knows that it really is about vibes and body language, perceivable clouds of pheromones and neurotransmitters that combine to send complex messages. These aromatic halos are instantly deciphered by the ancient brains around us. It’s why toddlers seem to read our minds when we try to outwit them with semantic codes. We say more to each other with these silent clouds of information than we ever could with silly words. And right now we’re oozing a queer blend of confidence and fear on the pitch. United are strong yet weak but the big time may be something we little people don’t completely understand. Conspiracies are probably rife. Fact is, we should have also won at Chelsea, but refereeing decisions obstructed us and Fergie was right to question biased ref Martin Atkinson. Things could be worse, as I say. We could be poor Arsenal, bringing out an old man to stand between the sticks, having crashed out of three – that’s right, three – competitions in a couple of weeks or so. Wenger will be pacing the sidelines in his tortoise coat, his reptile boat race grimacing madly in the title run-in. A very dear friend called John Burney died last week, aged 52. John told me recently that he thought the 3-1 loss at Liverpool was “a fix for the betting”, and I am inclined to agree. It’s John’s funeral tomorrow and I am drinking (again) tonight, while I look at photos of Carr Clough, Prestwich, Rainsough, Whitefield, town, etc, thinking of all the times we had. I can see him now, in leather soled shoes, man-pants, a smart shirt under a lambswool v-neck sweater. Hair swept slightly back, with an amused expression on his face. On his knees, helpless with laughter, to be exact. In a pub. Only the good die young and John was very good, and he believed in speaking the truth. He watched United to the very end and never lost his sense of humour or dignity. Most strangely, the least prestigious of those three competitions is the FA Cup, and it’s the one we HAVE to win. I just wish John had lived to see it, whatever the result. There’s no need for any bigonomotry for this one – it’s as big as it gets, let’s not kid ourselves. So if you’ll excuse me, I must play some music and look at some pictures and relive many memories of a great man and United supporter about whom many tales could be told. As Dr. Seuss once said, “Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened”.
Tags: bernard breslaw, darron gibson, earthquake machine, FA cup, football, HAARP, Manchester, wikipedia, Zebedee