Blood on the Tracks

It was difficult to focus on the Arsenal v Dortmund match the other night, with the brooding shadows of two Manchester United legends looming large in the night sky over the Emirates.

It was a good match too. Maybe not if you're a Gunner, given the result. Still, for us neutrals (Dortmund fans for the night), it was a pretty, entertaining spectacle of passing and moving and what not.

Still, on that day of days, with the details of Sir Alex Ferguson's latest, and surely last, autobiography being first trickled in tantalising droplets, then poured in great deluges throughout every media platform going, the game at the Emirates seemed somewhat trivial; an afterthought. Which, I suppose, is just as Fergie would have wanted; one final (?) 'up-yours' to Arsene Wenger, reminding the Frenchman, nay, the world, that he's still as box-office as they come.

Yet it was not Sir Alex, alone, that succeeded in diverting the nation's attention away from the match. For another player entered the stage, shortly before kick off, having been prodded and provoked all afternoon.

There are few among us that would willingly disturb this particular beast. His fury is legendary, his wrath frequently fatal. Many have tried, and failed, to take him on, only to be crushed by his relentless force of will. Sir Alex is, perhaps, the one man that would dare stand up to Roy Keane, though it's hard, even now, to pick a winner from the two.

Yet, therein lies the point. Who needs to pick a winner? Who would want to choose a side? Who cares whether or not the two men like one another?

Granted, it makes for a good story. Yet, for Manchester United fans of my generation, who were spoiled like bloated children over the Fergie years, Sir Alex and Keane are simply two sides of the same coin, destined to be forever intertwined in the club's rich history.

Do we care whether they are now stabbing each other in the back? Would we prefer they were enjoying a weekly game of croquet on the lawn? No. We couldn't care less, because we adore them both, for the incredible memories they've bestowed on us.

Much has been said, and written, about Ferguson this week. And rightly so. If anyone has earned the right to hog the limelight, it is surely him. And he's become quite the master at doing just that.

Still, with the embargo on any revelations from his memoir having been lifted at 2pm on Tuesday, I found myself tiring of the media's feeding frenzy by around ten-past, bored and weary and strangely saddened by the rug of opportunity to read his account for myself, thus drawing my own conclusions and forming my own opinions, being pulled from under me, then defecated on by all and sundry.

Which brings us back to Roy Keane, whose relationship with his former manager had, predictably, been chewed over, cow-like, then greedily devoured, throughout the day. The fact that he was scheduled for a stint in the pundit's chair, that evening, added a hint of spice to an already blisteringly hot dish.

Keane didn't disappoint. He never does. As I watched his measured response to Adrian Chiles' inevitable enquiry as to his feelings regarding Ferguson's version of events, transfixed by this moment of raw, compelling television, I was transported far away from the impending football match, to a night in Turin, fourteen years ago, that remains the most profound and powerful footballing memory of my life, hitherto; an example of breathtaking loyalty and self-sacrifice, the likes of which I haven't seen in a sporting arena since.

Fear not. I'm not about to run through a minute by minute match report of that fateful night when we witnessed the Old Lady being ruthlessly ravaged in the sanctuary of her own home. We all know what happened. It's forever etched on our psyches and branded on to our souls.

It is what happened to Keane that night that struck me so hard, and has stayed with me through all these years.

He wasn't like a man possessed. He was a man possessed. The football player equivalent of the Army of the Dead in The Lord of the Rings, Keane was an unstoppable force, everywhere at once, sweeping all before him and providing hope to his comrades when all had seemed lost.

Keane's performance is made all the more remarkable when set in the context of the personal tragedy he suffered that night, receiving a booking that ruled him out of the match he had been working towards all his life.

Others would have wallowed. Not so, Roy Keane. It was as if his grief at seeing the tatters of his dreams strewn around the turf of the Stadio delle Alpi spurred him on all the more, as he dragged the team he captained with such pride and distinction, kicking and screaming, back from the dead, towards the light of a Champions League final in the Camp Nou.

That night, Roy Keane epitomised what it meant to play for Manchester United. As fans, we can only sit and watch, often wishing we could play some part on the pitch, for we know that, if nothing else, we would run to the ends of the earth, and shatter every bone in our body, just to make a difference. We saw that commitment to the cause in Keane's sinew-snapping, eye-bulging display.

He was playing, not for Roy Keane, but for Manchester United, the club; for Charlton, Law and Best; for Sir Matt Busby and all his magnificent 'Busby Babes'; for each and every one of the poor souls lost in Munich; for all those that saw Old Trafford destroyed by Nazi bombs, and who rebuilt it brick by brick; for the fans, past and present; for his team mates, who he would make damn sure would play in the final showdown in Barcelona, even if he couldn't; and, yes, for his manager, the yet to be knighted, plain old Alex Ferguson.

The truth is, we don't need to pick a side out of these two men. They are both too big a part of our club's rich history. This is one scrap neither of them can win. Which must be galling for them both.

Let them play out their futile feud for the circus-loving masses, while the rest of us continue to relish the memories.

And bare in mind, without each other, neither would have been nearly so great.

Northern Light

Despite being only eight games old, this season feels significantly longer in the tooth. The international breaks haven't helped. There have only been two, but they're so mind numbing that the nails-being-dragged-down-a-blackboard tedium they inspire makes it seem like there have been many more. 

These black holes of boredom have to be filled with something. In the past, Manchester United fans would, despite missing the cut and thrust of the domestic game, use the breaks as an opportunity to relax. More often than not, our club was sitting pretty at the Premier League's summit, or at least within spitting distance of the top. The break was an irritation, but no more than that.

Unfortunately, this season's early international interruptions have been spent in a state of agonising confusion, as United fans have filled the interminable hours poring over patchy performances and dodgy team selections, as we continue to struggle against the bubbling current of self doubt rising from within us since the retirement of Sir Alex Ferguson in May. 

This was particularly so after the win over Sunderland, at the Stadium of Light. An away win against struggling opponents, in the midst of their own managerial upheaval, has rarely felt so sweet, made all the more delicious by the emergence onto the football world's radar of Adnan Januzaj, whose Michelin starred volley broke Sunderland hearts and lifted United spirits in equal measure. 

A limp performance, rescued by a last-gasp winner, is something we've all grown accustomed to witnessing from United over the last couple of decades, but such had been their disconcerting scarcity in the early stages of this term, we felt entitled to lap this one up and drink it down with relish. It felt like a turning point, and suddenly we looked forward to our next outing with some of the confidence of old.

The party, however, was short-lived. For there was the next international break, knocking on the door like a frumpy neighbour at one minute past midnight, complaining about the noise and threatening to call the police.

Suddenly, instead of enjoying the mouth-watering prospect of actually going into our next game with a modicum of momentum, we found ourselves engulfed by the mindless musings of Jack Wilshere, and Roy Hodgson's breathtaking stupidity during a halftime team talk, with a couple of predictably bland football matches thrown in for good measure. 

Just like that, our momentum had been sapped. By the time we all re-convened for some proper, meaningful football, at home to Southampton, Adnan's balletic beauty seemed a distant memory, and the nerves had, once again, taken hold in the hours before kick off. 

'The nerves.' Not something United fans are particularly used to. At least, not for the visits of the likes of Southampton. We've tended to reserve such feelings for big European nights, local derbies, and title-deciding six-pointers, in recent years. 

Nerves can do funny things to a crowd. On Champions League nights, for example, when two managers pit their wits against one another in a footballing game of chess, and the stadium announcer reels off a list of household superstars, the turf a vibrant green beneath the floodlights, slick from rain or sprinkler, the crowd's nerves become a kind of electricity, pulsating through the stadium, transmitted through the cold night air directly into the players' thumping hearts.

Not so the nerves that currently slither, serpent-like, through the stands of Old Trafford. Far from creating electricity, these nerves give rise to tetchiness, each mislaid pass or scuffed shot eliciting irritated moans from the gathered hordes.

Put simply, we're worried. Worried that we've lost our aura. Not all of it, of course. But some. 

It is clear that opponents don't seem as fearful as they did, upon entering the fray at the Theatre of Dreams. Why would they? They scent blood.

Yet this was surely inevitable, given how entangled were the auras of the club and Sir Alex himself. After all, he had spent twenty six years moulding team after glorious team, and indeed, the very club itself, into his own colossal image. 

It would take any club, even a Goliath like Manchester United, time to repair the gaping hole left by a man and leader like Sir Alex Ferguson. Likewise, it will take David Moyes time to envelop himself in anything like the aura possessed by his predecessor. It took Sir Alex a lifetime.

So let us not allow nerves to get the better of us. At least, not yet. As fans, it is our job to, in the words of Ferguson himself, 'Get behind the new manager,' and the team, do our bit to restore Old Trafford to the fortress it has been these many years, and re-establish the aura that strikes fear into the hearts of those that long to see us knocked off our lofty perch.

In the White Corner: Roy 'The Lead Balloon' Hodgson

Is Roy Hodgson a racist? It's a tough question.

I think we can, unequivocally, agree that he's not a comedian. 

That may seem unfair. Perhaps he delivered his 'space-monkey' gag with such impeccable comic timing as to render the England dressing room a veritable cauldron of uncontrollable belly-laughter during his halftime team talk on Tuesday night. Still, his choice of joke was so abominably poor that I'd be willing to put my reputation (if I had one) on the line to suggest otherwise. 

Indeed, it seems miraculous that anyone managed to stay awake long enough to be offended by the, erm, 'punch-line.' Whether or not you find the joke's content offensive is almost irrelevant. The joke's length, on the other hand, and its paucity of humour, is criminal.

The question of whether Roy's a racist, or not, is much more problematic. Partly because I don't know the bloke, thus I can only go off what I do know about him.

Based purely on his halftime wheeze, I'd probably say he's not a racist. I should probably come clean at this point, and admit that I wasn't there. Yet it seems fairly obvious, from what I've read, and from the reactions of numerous players who were privy to Hodgson playing the clown, that it was simply a catastrophically poor choice of rib-tickler, given that he ended up comparing, however innocently, a black man to a monkey.

Yet Roy has a certain amount of history when it comes to issues of racism, and it is when his quip is set in this context that things get a little more fuzzy. 

After all, this is a man who chose to go and play professional football in the warm, white embrace of apartheid South Africa.

As I mentioned earlier, I'm not close to Roy, having never met him, even on a London Tube, but those that do know him well, almost to a man, speak of his being a thoroughly decent chap, whose biggest regret in sixty six years upon God's green earth is that very decision to nestle his head in that country's fervently, violently racist bosom, citing 'footballing reasons,' and blaming it on the folly of youth.

That's all well and good, I suppose. I don't doubt for a moment that Hodgson has wrung his hands many times during the intervening years. Yet I can't help but find the 'folly of youth' argument a little absurd. 

Which is unusual, given that the 'folly of youth' defence is something we can all generally relate to with ease. After all, who amongst us didn't make a few wrong turns during our younger days?

Still, I can't for the life of me think of a reason, even as a lad in his mid-twenties, for doing that; for going there. No matter how drunk he might've been.

Imagine making such a 'mistake.' I mean, picture the scene; a sweaty Roy opens his eyes, groggily gets up from the bare floor, wiping stale vomit from his chin, his mangled mind a total blank from the night before. 

"Urgh. Where the hell am I?" he wonders, retrieving his phone from his discarded-trouser pocket (I know there were no mobiles back then but, please, humour me).

And there it is. A text from his pal: 

"LOOOOOOL!!!!! You were SO wasted last night mate!! Can't believe you ended up deciding to go and play your football for a hideous, barbaric, grotesquely racist regime the rest of the civilised sporting world has turned its back on!!! You daft prick!! LOOOOOOL!!!!"

Then, of course, there was his decision to pick John Terry ahead of Rio Ferdinand for the Euro 2012 finals, for the heinous crime of being the brother of a man who was (allegedly) racially abused by Terry in the full glare of the entire world. Or was it for 'footballing reasons' again? I forget.

Hodgson even went a step further, solemnly declaring his support for Mr Terry. "John, hopefully," said Roy, "will be freed as he was freed in a court of law, and will carry on playing for England." 

Remember that?! Still hard to believe, isn't it? We can only assume Hodgson never saw that footage of the incident at Loftus Road, because anyone that did was so horrified by what they'd witnessed, they never wanted to see John Terry in an England shirt (even a replica one) again. Unless, perhaps, they were, well...racist?

I'm not saying Roy Hodgson is racist. I'm not saying he isn't. He genuinely does come across as an affable, likeable fellow, and I'm pretty convinced his space-monkey joke was just a terrible misunderstanding. 

Still, shouldn't a man of his age, experience, position and salary; a man whose biggest regret, so we're told, is relocating to South Africa during those awful times, albeit for 'footballing reasons,' be expected to show just a little more self awareness as to leave the monkey jokes for the gentleman's club after the match?

Poor Jack Wilshere

Poor Jack Wilshere. I bet he wishes he'd never got out of bed on Tuesday morning. He probably did so with a carefully memorised list of answers to the inevitable smoking-related questions he was due to be asked that day, during his now infamous England press conference. Indeed, that was probably the main reason he'd been chosen to face the gathered hordes of journalists, the media gurus at the FA seizing the opportunity for him to clear the air, so to speak, and offer a more credible explanation to the nation than the smoke and mirrors offered by his 'representative' the previous week.

Poor Jack Wilshere. He had, no doubt, been prepared for the good humoured baying of a pack of hyenas, only to find himself emerging, a few minutes later, having been viciously ravaged by a pride of lions.

Yes, poor Jack Wilshere, who, in a blisteringly short space of time, has gone from being heralded as England's saviour and future captain-elect to, in some quarters at least (i.e. Twitter ) a full-blown xenophobic, right-wing, Hitler youth-type racist.

What wretched timing for poor Jack, too, his quotes coming, as they did, barely twenty four hours after EDL co-founder, leader and poster boy, Tommy Robinson, had managed to, once again, shoehorn his way into the headlines by falling on his flick-knife, renouncing far right extremism, and quitting, in order to pursue a new career writing Richard Curtis-esque romantic comedies starring Hugh Grant. Or something like that.

Set in this context, poor Jack's quotes about 'keeping England for the English' and what-not, seemed doubly controversial, and invited the wrath of the blood-thirsty press, not to mention those typically frenzied Twitter-folk.

Speaking of Twitter, poor Jack even attempted to clarify his remarks, via that medium, the following day, by essentially repeating himself almost word for word, thus clarifying nothing, while pointing accusatory fingers at those pesky journalists who had cunningly tricked him into it.

Is Jack Wilshere racist? Probably not. Is Jack Wilshere a young chap, cocooned from the real world, who simply struggled to get his point across about a troublesome issue when asked about it out of the blue, in the glare of the cameras? Probably.

The thing is, we always need something to talk about in the run-up to an England match, because England matches, and all that goes with them, are so terribly, terribly dull. If it hadn't been Jack, it would have been one of his teammates, or his manager. We would have spent the week inserting amusing captions on photos of Wayne Rooney's latest hair transplant, or heartlessly abusing Roy Hodgson for having a barely perceptible speech impediment. It just happened to be poor Jack's turn this time.

International breaks have become a hideously tedious chore to be endured, but not enjoyed. Much of the nation fell out of love with international football long ago. Seeing a player of Paul Scholes' genius labouring on the left wing, in order to squeeze the square pegs of Gerrard and Lampard into the round hole of an effective central midfield partnership, or a man of John Terry's highly questionable moral fibre, the captain's armband squeezing his bicep, barking orders from the back, put pay to most people's patriotism long ago. 

England matches, themselves, have become so miserably mundane that you find yourself vividly imagining gruesome ways to murder the England band, or scribbling heartfelt, pleading letters to TV companies like Sky and Virgin, begging them to invent a fast forward option to go with their pause and record services, in a desperate attempt to take your mind off the drab spectacle being played out on your screen.

Whether you agree with Jack Wilshere's opinion on the likes of Adnan Januzaj being courted by the English FA or not, at least he had the good grace to step up and offer us all something to talk about, other than what form of 4-4-2 England will adopt against our great rivals, Montenegro, on Friday evening, or whether and why good old, dependable work-horses like James Milner will be preferred to exciting young whips like Wilfried Zaha.

The most exciting thing about England matches, these days, is the opportunity to watch Roy Keane silently seething when one of his ITV colleagues has the audacity to disagree with his views, knowing he'd give anything to square up to them, as in days of yore, all bursting veins and bulging eyes, rather than sit, quietly biting his tongue and gripping his chair in white-knuckled frustration.

Good boy, Jack, and thanks. Now, who's up next? I wonder what James Milner's views are on American foreign policy and the War on Terror...

Crisis-Talk

It is a question oft-asked by football's chattering classes, but rarely, if ever, resolved. When does a blip become a crisis?

Why, this season alone, which remains in its infancy, barely out of nappies and still prone to occasional accidents, we've been subjected to numerous blips and countless crises. From Arsenal's crisis against Aston Villa on the opening day, that calmed into a blip with the capture of Mesut Özil, to Joe Hart, who continues to be given special dispensation to enjoy the longest-running blip in the history of football.

Manchester United, though, are a strange case. We've got used to them experiencing the occasional blip every season under Sir Alex Ferguson. Yet we've also grown accustomed to them treating such periods with the glowering contempt of their then-manager. They'd lose two or three games on the trot, or suffer a particularly uncharacteristic, heavy defeat, leading to predictable headlines regarding their imminent demise. Then, quicker than you could holler "Fergie out," the team had shrugged off their torpor, like a soldier shrugging off a few hours of dreamless sleep when woken by a shower of enemy shells.

This season's Manchester United, however, with David Moyes in the swivel chair, is a very different beast. We know the players, of course. Indeed, they're the very same players, with the addition of one of Moyes' most loyal and dependable henchmen from Goodison, Marouane Fellaini, that won last season's Premier League without breaking sweat, who had it all but wrapped up by March, and went about the final few weeks of the season with a palpable air of meh-ness, nonchalantly conceding goals, barely even turning up to give the crowds their money's worth.

Yet now, things are not so straightforward. Where United fans would laugh knowingly at headlines suggesting a crisis at their club in the past, now they aren't so sure. The majority of them have, thus far, spent the early days of the season in a  strange state of good-humoured terror. Desperate for David Moyes, the 'young Fergie,' hand-picked for the job by the man himself, to succeed, they are like someone who wakes up to find themselves on an unfamiliar rollercoaster ride on which they would never have agreed to embark had they been awake. Terrified of heights, they are forced to endure a wretched, nauseating experience, where blip and crisis merge, with painfully disorientating results. 

Having thrashed last year's 'everybody's second favourite team,' Swansea City, on their own turf, the watching world nodded sagely, at one in their assessment that the transition had been so seemless, the squad bequeathed by Ferguson so brimming with serial-winning talent, as to be barely noticeable. 

With that performance in mind, the like-watching-paint-dry spectacle against Chelsea was seen as a blip, an off-night, something to forget, if only we could remember any of it in the first place. 

Until, that is, they arrived at Anfield. The performance at the Liberty Stadium seemed a distant memory within five minutes. Liverpool looked all verve and pace and telepathic, ball-on-a-piece-of-string passing, that left the befuddled champions chasing shadows for most of the match. 

Still, "Bah!" came the cry from the United faithful. "We never play well at Anfield and, besides, we'll put Crystal Palace to the sword next time out." So, still a blip. Only the team didn't stick to the script, labouring against the newly-promoted Londoners, a worrying lack of imagination the running theme throughout. 

Nevertheless, three points had been gained, and the 4-2 victory over Bundesliga high-flyers, Bayer Leverkusen, brought about by a performance of relatively slick movement and swift counter attacking play, seemed to suggest the dawning of a brave new world (or, at least, a familiar, Fergie-like world). No blips or crises in sight.

Which lasted all of five days, when a potential crisis of epic proportions darkened our doorways, as we watched the footballing equivalent of witnessing our spouse enjoying unfathomably long, rampant, noisy sexual intercourse with a rich, young, handsome, virile neighbour.

Yet still we told ourselves this was just another blip, and allowed a tepid 1-0 Capital One Cup victory over Liverpool to assuage our growing fears.

The defeat to West Brom, though, on our home soil, and conceded with barely a whimper, meant we could no longer keep the talk of crisis from bobbing its gruesome head from beneath the surface. Grimacing, we joked about relegation scraps and trips to Bournemouth in the coming years, as it finally dawned on us that our star may have waned with the passing of the guard.

Going 1-0 down in the first five minutes at the Stadium of Light, on Saturday, was hardly the tonic we craved. And, as woeful cross after woeful cross blazed high into the grateful hands of the leering Sunderland supporters in the stands throughout the first half, our crisis appeared to be descending into full-blown melt-down (and perhaps would have done so, were it not for a David de Gea save of impossible-to-describe magnificence).

Until, that is, a young Belgian-Albanian-Englishman (pah!) by the name of Adnan Januzaj batted away the thunderclouds with Zeus-like authority in the second half, a beacon of light and hope in a darkening world, and a potential new hero for United's fans to worship for years to come (assuming he isn't whisked away to Bayern Munich with all of football's other players).

Hang on, we're still no clearer as to when a blip becomes a crisis. Never mind. Chances are they're both just things dreamt up by the story-hungry press, and seized upon by an insatiable public. 

Ask supporters of clubs such as Leeds United, Portsmouth or Coventry City what constitutes a crisis, and they'll no doubt suggest something rather different to a few hilarious Joe Hart blunders or the most successful team in the history of English football sitting six points from the Premier League summit after seven games of a predictably unsettling season of flux and upheaval. 

Though, if United don't beat Southampton after the international break, I'll be checking Bournemouth hotel reviews on Trip Advisor, just in case.