Ferguson will be looking for a stoked-up Old Trafford to lift his team and intimidate the opposition
Ferguson will be looking for a stoked-up Old Trafford to lift his team and intimidate the opposition. This is a device to make us beleaguered, to create team spirit and strengthen the mood of the club."Quite possibly. Publicly fierce, Ferguson can be amusingly self-deprecating in private. As long as any bias against us is not translated into harm by the governing bodies, we don't worry And I think Fergie is a clever bastard. Their own channel would need other teams to comply but clearly a Premiership wanting to be even-handed is treading a fine line, worried that its flagship club may bloody-mindedly ignore domestic matters should the European league gather momentum."Most United fans savour the hatred It is an acknowledgement that we are the best," says Kurt "All class division falls apart It unites us. At first shocked by the dislike, when he witnessed bananas being thrown at Paul Ince, the reaction to Cantona's suspension and hearing a BBC announcer saying that their weekend had been improved by United losing, the manager now looks to make capital from it.Ferguson turned United's power on the FA last week, saying that if his club did not receive some concessions, they might not play ball when digital TV came around, instead going their own way.
"In Guildford," says Kurt, "there are four or five hundred United fans. They are like a foreign sect, offending the locals, and they love it."If they haven't come to love it, it seems that United under Ferguson have at worst come to live with it and at best learned to profit from it. Another is that, as the jibe has it, their fans come from far and wide, but not Manchester. Howard Wilkinson at Leeds used to say that the fans there spent too much time singing anti-United songs rather than backing their own team."Such "triumphalist crowing" by United's following, as Kurt puts it, is clearly one reason why United are frequently detested. Their clubs and their lives are so sad that they have nothing better to do than criticise United.
For the traditional supporter there is an element of the modern United that does stick in the craw, I have to admit But you would only ever say that talking amongst yourselves. Mostly you use that to rub other clubs' noses in it, in that loadsamoney Eighties way. "When Liverpool were the most successful club, there was still this Scouse proletarian feel to them. They were built up with the money of supporters and the people, a good traditional club."The new breed of supporter at United probably doesn't know anything different than all this commercialism.
Hatred is not too strong a word in these days of an angry, jealous society, a mood spared Sir Matt Busby in a less complicated era."United these days are probably an easy metaphor for a lot of what's wrong with modern football," says Kurt. Roman taxi drivers would tell you before last year's European Cup final they hoped Ajax would beat Juventus. Bayern Munich fans will probably be urging on United come Wednesday.In Britain, Leeds United were roundly reviled during the 1970s, and a dose of failure, at the European Cup Final of 1975, improved their image a little. There is nothing new, or even English, in antipathy towards a country's top club.