The season’s kicked off amid weird uncertainty in the air. What to wear and what not to: All those G&G windsocks that inflated our hopes, now in danger of being cast off like so many used Johnnies. Imagine if only one individual kept it going? He (or she)’d be a technicolor bird in the palm of a cyclops’ hand…stranger than it is horrible…and it is very horrible. One lone gay child decked in red, gold and green surrounded by the instant gratification mob, all sulking ‘cos Glazer’s still pulling the strings. Extinction of a dream. This won’t be resolved overnight. Wearing Norwich scarves – as humiliating and garish as that is – is only one small fraction of what needs doing. Fortunately, the rest doesn’t concern us plebs; it’s in the hands of the big boys, those whose mothers went to finishing school and think the great unwashed are a joke. Lovely people, honest. They make barbs about each others’ choice of holiday chateau or insider trading moves while we get pissed and scoff chip butties, secure in the knowledge it’s out of our control. Let the egomaniacs battle it out while we reduce the whole business to a tabloid sideshow thanks to alcohol, drugs and fried food. If you want to attack those who stand out for their poor understanding of football politics, just remember – there’s a lot of sheep out there, followers who haven’t a fucking clue. The megastore harlequins are harmless. They don’t even know enough to hide their ignorance. It’s your responsibility to unearth the camouflaged danger within. Responsibility isn’t for us, I know. Down a hole shovelling shit suits us better, far from the egotesticle. But football is a working-class sport. I’ve gone from ditch-digger to roofer to removal man to housepainter to sign-writer, to pesticide analyst to advertising, and if I’ve learnt one thing it’s this: People are cunts. If I wasn’t such a hairy bastard I’d have murdered half the fuckers I’ve ever met by now. Can’t be shedding androgenic fur everywhere with those forensics sniffing around, though, can we? The camouflaged wankers who claim to be proper United would be top of my hit list. Everyone’s whingeing ‘cos that UNITED—KIDS—WIFE bloke got his picture took with a Glazer in a lift in America, like he committed a fucking war crime or something. While wanking over the prospect of some upper-crust gaggle taking us away from all this. Fact is, football is shite, we’re all hopeless romantics, and the jaded moneymen are laughing like a goon squad in our hearts. United’s the McCoy, the rich man’s club. Sheff United, Sunderland and Stoke all sport the red, white and black but each is a shrunken malformed version of the real thing. We’re the good guys, the James Bond to the ugly Eastlands whore-hound. The nearest competitor to us is Liverpool. In terms of football history they’re a ruin we can barely see from the top of the bustling OT pyramid, obscured by the curvature of footballing time. Arsenal are there, too, in the stepwise ascent to M16. Others labour far below; yer Evertons and whatnot. Put another way, Arteta is the poor man’s Fabregas is the poor man’s Ronaldo is the poor man’s Giggs. We represent home-grown steel. The kind that doesn’t rust and keeps coming back again and again when the others have gone home to blow-dry their scant pubes. I’d have included Torres in that staircase but he belongs to a separate lineage; he’s part worm and those others are mostly goat. I still want Fergie to sign him though, that pasty-faced Spaniard in the works. In technicolour terms full-headed Queerbeasts like you can understand, Paul Rieser is a poor man’s Bruce Willis is a poor man’s Jack Nicholson is a poor man’s Sean Connery. United’s perched proudly at the apex of this diminishing baldy sex symbol formation. You see, United and Giggs (and Connery), they’re one and the same. They’re COVERED in pubes, and as such leave evidence everywhere they go. That’s why we can’t just kill any bastard that gets in our way, despite popular terrace chants to the contrary. Instead we choose to fight on the side of good, against evil, like super-heroes. Body hair tightly sealed in under snazzy costumes. Now there’s a conundrum: Why are those who’ve acquired super powers via gamma rays or radioactive spiders capable of constructing those imaginative skin-tight suits? How are we to believe that Daredevil, blind as a fucking bat, could manufacture that costume? Being able to stitch fabrics together with unrivalled meticulousness is an as-yet unspoken aspect of the special powers that superheroes acquire. You’d need patience, and superheroes should lack that, in my opinion. Not exactly Mrs. Brown You’ve Got a Lovely Tortoise, are they? It’s a superhero we need to rescue United, not the Four Horsemen of the Stockopalypse. Proper megalomaniacal reptile mitherers fresh from some extra-galactic mission vanquishing warty inhumans. That said, look at Tarzan. Raised in the jungle by apes and still managed a pretty nifty pair of leather trunks. And he could fight. Makes me feel right inadequate. Fuck it, I say. Suck yer gut in, have another chip butty, live the dream. And what is the dream these days? It’s sad; I recently watched city beaten by a last gasp penalty at Sunderland. As small time as it is, it made my weekend seeing them lose. city think everything is going to fall into place immediately, a bit like the G&G sulkers. Only at Wastelands the sulking goes on on the bench, not in the stands. The subs at Sunderland, notably Given and Adabeyor, looked like Veruca Salt upon discovering they had to actually work for that Golden Egg. There are people – generally 35-year old know nowts – who insist that Liverpool are our main rivals, but in truth it’s those blue bastards from Quadrant Two. With their billboards and almost-past-it foreign acquisitions, and Kaka tattoos and Arab outfits and ludicrous statistical dredging. At least Liverpool supporters can get in our faces with “five times” or “football’s first clobbered-up mob” or “Brookside was more realistic than Coronation Street” or “the Beatles were better than the Hollies, Herman’s Hermits and Freddie and The Dreamers combined”, etc. What have city got to brag about? Their preposterous parallel to Best, Law and Charlton is Summerbee, Bell and Lee. But what did that mediocre ménage à twats actually win? A league championship in ’68 (we had bigger fish to fry), an FA Cup in ’69, a League Cup in ’70 and ’76 and a European Cup Winners’ Cup in 1970. So basically the ’76 League Cup is the only thing they’ve won since 1970. And their subs’ bench is packed with faces like smacked arses, and yes, you think I’m going senile with this repetitive dwelling on city and you want to hear about drugs and that instead…
Just say no, Queerbeast. Drugs are for naughty Beatles. I see you as more of a Herman’s Hermit; safe and sound in your carapace, supping Horlicks in an eternally black and white pre-psychedelic Hovis realm. Listening to “Sugar Spun Sister”, waiting for that superhero in red, gold and green to sweep you up in his arms and make it all go away. Perhaps the Vision, the Marvel mutant able to render himself intangible (and batter Superman, in my opinion), is that superhero. Perhaps it’s Ken Dodd. Who knows? I saw Ken perform live once in ‘73. What a Sunday that was. I’d been to Maine Road with the cubs that morning; Akela was well in at city. I was bullied into going by older lads in my neighbourhood, to make up the numbers. I was frankly amazed at the power of the workout Bell, Summerbee, Lee and Co. were undergoing, deep under the Main Stand. Belting real footballs against a concrete wall with such force I’d never imagined. They were training in plastic suits and the sweat was bursting from them. A steady stream of dewdrops running off Nijinsky’s hooter all over peoples’ autograph books. Didn’t see owt like that again till I did some bad sulphate in ’83 and suffered the same effect for vastly different reasons. Didn’t get that close to Bell again until ’93, when I delivered a box of industrial fasteners to his restaurant in Whitefield. I had no autograph buke that day in ‘73, just a few bits of paper scrounged on the fly. I’d refused to bring a real autograph buke on the grounds I was a red. In truth I knew me ol’ feller would never pay for one. You know the kind, smallish, landscape-oriented mock-leather bound. Different coloured pages, very girlish. You probably had a few, Queerbeast. Full of Peter Noones (Ian Brown’s biological father), Owen Coyles (Fletcher’s biological father), Alex Mcleishes (Scholes’ biological father; give him a break, he was 16 at the time you judgemental cunt!) and James McFaddens (Rooney’s malnourished twin). But that’s your business. Went to see Ken Dodd that night at the Opera House with me mam and dad. The only bit I remember was when Ken pretended to shoot a gun in the air and a full size inflatable cow fell onto the stage. Super, yes, but hero, well, you be the judge. Oh aye, I was quite the man about town when I was 8. Never been inside OT though; just skulked hungrily on the forecourt with Salford urchins, minding cars and secretly swooning at the majestic air.
The 35-year old know nowts I referred to earlier will also tell you with a discreet wink that United supporters actually sang YNWA at the ’83 FA Cup Final, like they’re imparting some secret knowledge you should be grateful for. They’ll tell you the Stone Roses are better than the Beatles. That’s when you realise you’re dealing with supercocks. We sang YNWA every week, and the Beatles are to pop music what Shakespeare is to theatre. Now do me a favour, Chameleon; go and stand on the little glass bit in the Hilton Tower bar and listen to “Hanging Around” by the Stranglers on your QueerTunes player. You’ll love it, I promise. Welcome to our hole.
