February’s over. March comes in like a lion and out like a lamb, as the saying goes. Another five weeks and it’ll be 60 degree weather here. Time to celebrate the spring and strap one’s balls on for the title run-in. Good riddance to February, nowt good about that month, really. The annual remembrance of Munich reminded us not just how terrible the air disaster was, but how few people now survive who were personally affected by it. As a result, “my” Munich will be forever preserved in the words and emotions of my parents’ generation. People who loved to watch the Busby Babes, and who were devastated when they were snatched away. Not everyone saw it that way, though. Back in the 80s it was common to see a full Scoreboard End of scousers singing their famous Munich song, bouncing to the rhythm of cruelty while we spat and threw missiles and climbed the railings to show our displeasure. Munich may have sewn the seed of a global brand, but it’s also a painful target painted on our collective hearts. It’s part of football culture. Now we’re all a million years old it’s easy to slag kids off who sing Hillsborough or Munich songs, but they’re young and they want their share of the scandal. Imagine if a top Premiership side was wiped out today. Would those same kids sing songs about that? Or a hundred young people crushed to death in a badly designed stadium? When I heard about Hillsborough I was in my flat, alone, painting a sign. I felt only shock and horror. Three miles up Bury New Road, 25% of a pubful was cheering each time the death toll rose on the television. Would I have been cheering among them had I been on the lash that day? I don’t think so. Testosterone is paradoxical stuff; it makes heroes and villains of us in unequal fractions. When 24-year old Harry Gregg climbed back into the burning wreckage to save fellow passengers he showed his true colours and has been revered as a lion of a man ever since. Would I have entered that burning aircraft to help others? It’s easy to say yes, but that kind of heroism is very rare. 99% of men would have been grateful to have survived, with little thought for his team-mates, much less the pregnant woman and her toddler Gregg rescued from that dangerous smouldering slushpile.
Slushpile. Now there’s a word. It’s what publishers call their unsolicited manuscripts. I fancy meself a writer so let’s talk about me now, shall we? I’m currently writing fifteen different stories, not one of which is vaguely normal or sane. One’s called “Big Fat Horrible Twat and the Slave Girls”. That one’s about this big fat horrible twat – and I mean a really sweaty overweight couch potato with hairy earholes and a stinky arse – who enslaves these perfect, sexy young girls and spends his days crawling all over them, sticking his tongue into every orifice, forcing his engorged member into their rectums and, having forced them to live on a diet of donner kebabs, chips, pudding and gravy (and not washing his cock afterwards), taking the whole funky sweaty sexy disgusting bacchanal up a level as each day passes and the slave girls slowly become big fat horrible twats themselves. But it’s only a first draft, so it might change. Another one is, “It’s All Gone Cunt-Shaped”, about Liverpool and Chelsea’s recent non-challenge for the 2011 Premiership title. In this one, the two football clubs are taken over by shape-shifting aliens who desperately try to knock us off our perch by fielding superpowered ringers in place of mortal footballers. Unfortunately, an alien posing as Gerrard forgets which side it’s on when Liverpool play Chelsea at Anfield (a bit like last season) and its heart rips itself in two right there in front of a confused Kop. Basically, it all goes proper cunt-shaped and United rampage through the earth’s footballing crust, tearing it asunder like a great steel ramrod, causing an explosion that destroys the planet, and consequently the aliens. But it’s a first draft and will definitely change.
Now back to reality. Only joking. The most important thing for me this season is that city don’t win anything, followed by city not finishing in the top four, followed by city never winning anything ever again. Have you noticed that new feeling you get now when they show the bottom half of the table? What you’ve never had you never miss, and boy do I miss seeing the bittermen languishing in sixteenth. Now it’s like, “wait, where’s ci-?” and then you remember; they’re right behind us, their Pot Noodle/Not Poodle breath on our necks, singing Munich songs in their sleep. It’s a dose of angina every time I see them in the top four. Balotelli’s stegosaurus head, Barry’s Goth features and poor grimacing Shay Given, completely out of the rotation. Mancini is so paralysed and clueless he daren’t even bring his “reserve” goalie in for odd games and give Hart a rest. But I’ll shut up; why should I give him football tips?
We’re still the team to beat. Chelsea have their African shooters, city their second-tier superstars, but United composes an eclectic bunch of pagans and kings. When Chicharito prays in the centre circle before games it’s a big V-sign to the European media. He’s Mexican; he doesn’t give a shite what they say about him in the Daily Star. He’s the antithesis of an England World Cup ditherer. He tore Wigan apart like a Toltec sword with a smile on his face. I’d be willing to bet Chicharito would have gone back into that plane to rescue his fellow passengers, too. He is fearless and will make life hell on winklepickers for Mancini or whoever succeeds the Italian for the next several seasons. It must be hard being a football manager though; corralling numerous megalomaniacs, settling disputes between team-mates, etc. The respect Sir Alex instils is the exception not the rule. Arsene Wenger seems to enjoy a protective yet stern effect on the Arsenal players, while Mancini builds his mountainous bench and tries to arrange those bitches as best he can. It must be like juggling irritable Chihuahuas. Chicharito is no Chihuahua – he’s a puma – and Fergie’s teaching him the ropes. Successful managers have to be control freaks (or great leaders if you must be polite). The kind of men who create a dimple in the spacetime around them, such is the mass of their ego. You know the type: Everything about their body language screams, “I am in charge”. You have your work cut out to get from under such domineering bleeders. That depression in spacetime translates to another in your central nervous system, and it drains you. You’re like a spider in a web. If you ever escape you must remain beyond the periphery of their spell, for the mangle is always ready to suck you back in. Ronaldo escaped the clutchment, but Rooney didn’t. Probably ‘cos Ronnie’s a merciless knave, with a full-length mirror permanently in his head, but Rooney’s just a snide elbow merchant. People like that are psychos. Real ones. A few hundred years ago they’d have been dungeon keepers, knights, lords and masters. Today they’re celebrities, sportsmen and politicians. The key to being a successful secret psycho is keeping the urge down to size. Reserve a small compartment in your head where a full-blown murderer’s mindset roams free, but in midget form. A cub, not a full-grown lion, so you can control it while removing genetic samples. Not that I’d know, like.
But how does SAF get so deep into the heads of his rivals? I think I know. I reckon Fergie is capable of remote viewing. After a glass or three of wine he enters a hyper-reality neither inside nor outside his swede. Cruises the universe until he arrives at the Galactic Federation Headquarters. There, he liaises with his reptilian overlords. Makes plans for the conquest of humankind. Some of you may already suspect that Fergie is a lizard. He’s certainly known to exhibit the strategy of the Komodo dragon when dealing with his enemies; the Komodo bites its prey with toxic gnashers, then calmly observes the victim as it slowly succumbs to the poison. Messrs Keegan and Benitez fell foul of particularly virulent infections, but there are many other carcasses rotting in the deserted gulleys of Premiership history. I’m afraid we’re almost out of time, Dear Reader. And that’s a shame. I was just getting into YOUR head there…
The farmer from down the road ploughed our driveway the other day. There’s a pile of snow on the lawn 30 feet long and 10 feet high. I bought him a bottle of Crown Royal for his troubles. Worth every penny. It is dark now, and I can see three snowmobiles racing across the field over the way, their eerie headlights and chainsaw-like engines cutting in and out of the woods. Nasty, dangerous stuff, snowmobiling. Those motherfuckers can easily do 100 MPH, and sometimes the elastic recoil of an unseen bump can damn near take a man’s head off. If I saw one of those boys wipe out would I run across a thousand yards of three foot deep snow to help him? Brave possible coyotes, cougars and bears here in the wee hours? Fucking right I would. But it’s nothing compared to what Harry Gregg did in Munich. I watch every Premier League game here, with my satellite dish. They start around 7:30 am with the time difference. Then another at 10 and one at 12:30. If we’re the third game it makes us look even better. The boys in red sweeping the pill about so gracefully. Our relentless passing is like a machinegun in a Vietnamese jungle, going “n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n” only each bullet is in fact a Nani banana cross to Rooney, or a hairy Raphael coconut to Chicharito, or a Scholes lob on for Berbatov- I’d better stop there. But I’ll say one more thing; just like in Vietnam, this season it’s gonna be n-n-n-n-nineteen.
Tags: Chicharito, dimple in spacetime, harry gregg, little pea, man united, Manchester, Manchester United, munich 1958, munich air disaster, sir alex ferguson