There was an air of mutiny around Old Trafford last night, again. We’re not quite talking ’bout a revolution (like Tracy Chapman), maybe, but defo the beginnings of a decent-sized township rebellion (Rage Against the Machine).
Fuck you I won’t do what you tell me. On 20 minutes and five seconds, we’re gonna make tennis balls rain down (oh I wish it would rain down by Phil Collins) onto the pitch. Fuck knows how they were snuck in because my nephew Declan was practically taken to jail for drinking a can of Coke in the queue to get in and he wasn’t going to bring it in anyway, just put it in the bin by the turnstile. But then again Roma fans got flares in, so fair dos. Anyway, NE14 10IS? New balls please: they were chucked, as I say, as the clock rocked around (Bill Halley? Michael J. Fox?) to 20:05, a pointed reference to 2005, the year the Glazers took control of Manchester United and began disrupting the club in rather more damaging ways than a few hundred fluorescent yellow balls ever could.
It was an effective protest, although the tennis puns were almost too easy. United’s owners have been taking the, ahem, advantage for more than two decades. The supporters have been calling, ahem, fault for much of that time. And, judging by the first half against Roma, the players were doing their best to ensure we went out in straight sets grunting away like a set of Monica Seleses.
Love-all? There wasn’t much love in the air, everywhere you looked around (John Paul Young). But I bet a few of the ballboys have been flogging the discarded balls today. I used to get 25p per golf ball I found near a local good-walk spoiled club. Hopefully those lads and lasses have a field day today. Unless Scruffy Jim got there first and put on a new Executive Member Package (yours for only £3k!) for some Tim Henman twat to ‘experience the glory of walking out onto (the apron of the) pitch’ to grab them. Like when those same Andrew Castles pay £2.5k to ‘plant the corner flag’.
There were green and gold balloons, too, another reminder that whatever happens on the pitch, the grievances off it aren’t going anywhere. Not that United supporters have needed much reminding lately. Fifty-four days without a win is quite enough to make anyone reach, protectively, for their balls.
I approached Old Trafford across the wobbly bridge from Salford Quays, which seemed an apt way to begin the evening. An unstable structure, a distinct lack of confidence in what was underneath me, and the nagging suspicion that things might/ will collapse at any moment. It was rather like watching the Red Devils this season. Shit Dingle-version rollercoastery.
A wobbly bridge there.
Anyhowsup, there was another familiar sight inside the ground which I spotted at halfers (which is possibly what Wimbledon-types call half-time): a bedsheet-banner bearing the words PLAY LIKE YOU MEAN IT. The last time I remember seeing this makeshift marvel which always gives me an earworm of The Killers was at Craven Cottage, on 4 November 2023, almost exactly three years earlier. United were enduring a miserable spell under Erik ten Hag, with some particularly shambolic Champions League performances, and supporters were imploring the players to show a little pride. United actually won that afternoon, courtesy of an injury-time Bruno Fernandes strike. We were in poor form then, certainly, but it seems almost quaint compared with our current predicament.
The banner has a certain history of its own. I used to have the odd pre-match drink with its originator, Stu, and was pleased to see it make a reappearance. It isn’t the most elegantly constructed banner in the United collection, admittedly. Nobody is going to confuse it with ONE LOVE or NIELD REDS. But it has resonance, and its message has rarely been more appropriate. Because that’s what we’ve been reduced to asking of Manchester United footballers: not brilliance, not trophies. Not even, at this stage, particularly sophisticated football. Just play like you mean it, pleeaaasseeee!
The bloke sitting on our row in the Sir Alex Ferguson Stand summed up the prevailing mood well as we moaned on relentlessly pre-game. He was (when I’m) 64 and told me that he could have been playing walking football that evening. He grimaced and said he wished he had been. As it turned out, he could probably have done both. United spent much of the opening 45 minutes playing walking football themselves. It was dreadful. Not just bad, but the sort of bleak, dispiriting performance that makes you question your own sanity (am I really seeing this or has some Leeds fan’s wet-dream AI slop just been downloaded directly into my eyeballs?). We were slow, shapeless and seemingly incapable of recognising the danger unfolding in front of us.
My nephew Declan, who was attending with me, spotted Diogo Dalot’s positioning after about three minutes. He was operating so far up the pitch that you wondered whether he’d mistaken his role for that of an auxiliary centre-forward. Roma certainly noticed. Declan is at primary school but he clocked it. The United coaching staff didn’t however, and both of the Roman goals owed a great deal to the acres of space Dalot was leaving behind him. I can only assume he’d been instructed to play that high, because otherwise it was an extraordinary display of positional indiscipline.
As United sleepwalked into a two-goal deficit, my mind wandered to another encounter with Roma, almost 20 years ago: the famous 7–1. Michael Carrick scored twice that night, and Old Trafford witnessed one of the great European performances in the club’s history. Here, for a horrible spell, I genuinely feared we might be about to experience the reverse. There was little evidence that United had either the organisation or the appetite to prevent it.
I also noticed that Benjamin Šeško was sitting in a box behind us. Big Ben has been sorely missed. I didn’t see him moving, so unfortunately I have no exclusive update on his fitness. Given what was happening on the pitch, I was half-tempted to ask whether he’d brought his boots or if he wanted my shin for a transplant.
And then, somehow, everything changed. Rome wasn’t built in a day, but football moves fast sometimes. Sometimes it spends 45 (I’m-not-allowed-to-swear-cos-I’m-with-my-nephew-but-FUCK-OFF-FOR FUCK’S SAKE-YOU-CHARLATANS-NOT-YOU-TIM-BURGESS) minutes convincing you that you are wasting your life, then gives you another 45 that make you remember for fucking true why you’ve devoted so much of it to the game and why you keep coming and suffering the slings and arrows.
United emerged for the second half looking as though somebody had pressed the fast-forward button. Suddenly there was movement. There was urgency. Players ran towards opponents rather than away from responsibility. Passes were played with purpose. There was thrust, energy, aggression and, most remarkably of all, a sense that the players actually wanted to win. They were, like, AFFRONTED by their predicament.
It was almost unrecognisable from the first-half performance. And Old Trafford responded. The Roma supporters had been magnificent throughout, filling the ground with noise and colour and demonstrating exactly what European nights ought to feel like. But United’s support was magnificent too, particularly once there was something worth supporting. The atmosphere became electric. When the equaliser went in, the celebrations around us were extraordinary. Me, Dec, and my sister might have ended up in Big Ben’s box. When the winner followed, they were something else again. Bodies everywhere, strangers embracing, the sort of glorious, undignified chaos that makes the word ‘limbs’ a bit Wimbledon.
It brought back memories of that ridiculous 5–4 victory over Lyon, another night when United somehow dragged themselves back from the brink of European humiliation. My son Leon was with me that evening, and I subsequently credited him with being our lucky mascot. Last night, that responsibility passed to Declan. I’m beginning to wonder whether the club should consider offering the pair some sort of consultancy arrangement. Their record is certainly better than that of most people currently employed to influence events at Old Trafford. JASON WILLY COCKS.
There were individual performances worth celebrating, too. Matheus Cunha was in beast mode (Ludacris). He embodied everything that had been missing before the interval: spirit, determination, movement and an obvious desire to make something happen so he could get over the embarrassment of doing that daft surfing USA celebration before seeing it disallowed at Stamford Bridge. Yes, he managed to collect two yellow cards in a remarkably short space of time. And yes, I’ve been extremely critical of Lisandro Martínez in this column for doing much the same thing. But there was a difference: when trick-or-treating’s Martínez was dismissed at Chelsea, he disappeared straight down the tunnel, seemingly uninterested in what happened to his teammates in his absence. Cunha, by contrast, took a seat on the advertising hoarding and tried to watch the final moments of the match from there.
It was a small thing, perhaps. But it told you something. He’d lost his place on the pitch, but he hadn’t lost interest in the team. I’d already forgiven him. Martínez, meanwhile, has considerably more work to do before he receives the same absolution. Indeed, his introduction last night provided one of the more revealing moments of the evening. There was a distinctly mixed reception as he entered the field, with quite a few boos audible around the ground. Then came a pointed, considerably warmer cheer for Shea Lacey, who was introduced at the same time.
The contrast was unmistakable: supporters aren’t stupid, unless they’ve been to Centre Court too many times and all that moving your head from side to side has jiggered their braincells. They recognise effort, they remember what has happened before, and they have their own ways of expressing approval and disapproval.
Which brings me back to Dalot: I’ve given him a fair amount of criticism in this column, and his first-half performance did nothing to make me reconsider. His positioning was THE HOUR OF THE BEWILDERBEAST (Badly Drawn Boy), and Roma exploited it ruthlessly. They ORGIED on it, as Romans do. But credit where it’s due: he was much better after the break, contributed the assist for the equaliser and showed considerably more purpose. Admittedly, the bar had been set so low that he could almost have stepped over it without breaking stride.
A couple of weeks ago, it was reported that Dalot was concerned about losing his ‘Champions League status’ next season because of United’s dreadful form. Having watched his first-half positioning, I can only conclude that his status is that of a pantomime horse. Still, at least he tried. And, in the second half, he helped make something happen. That matters.
It would be tempting to interpret this extraordinary comeback as some sort of turning point. Perhaps it will be. Football has a habit of manufacturing false dawns, and United have been specialising in them for longer than anyone would care to remember. One thrilling half of football doesn’t erase 54 days without a victory. It doesn’t explain why the first half was so appalling, or why this group of players should need the humiliation of a two-goal deficit before discovering a collective pulse. And it certainly doesn’t make the protests against the ownership any less justified.
But it did remind us of something important: Old Trafford isn’t dead and on nights like this, the idea of a New Trafford should be given the short-shrift it deserves. The supporters haven’t given up. The passion hasn’t disappeared. The willingness to roar the team forward, to turn a football ground into a seething, bouncing cauldron of noise, is still there. It just needs something in return. Give us a little fight and we’ll give you everything we’ve got. That was the lesson of the second half. Not that United are suddenly a great side, or even a particularly good one. But that there remains an extraordinary reservoir of goodwill among supporters who have been given precious little reason to feel optimistic.
As we made our way out, I thought again about the walking-football enthusiast on our row. I suspect he’d decided he’d made the right choice after all. And I thought about Stu’s banner: PLAY LIKE YOU MEAN IT. For 45 minutes, United hadn’t, for the next 45, they had. It really shouldn’t be too much to ask that they do it for 90.
Now time for Jerry’s final thought. Two of them actually. I’ll hold up my fingers in a V-sign to demonstrate, Mr. Glazer. First, do you even think Scruffy Jim would get let in at Wimbledon? Even though he has all that dough? Second, if you don’t know what the crowd wants of you there was a handy sign outside the ground yesterday: MANCHESTER UNITED: SALE. And an arrow pointing away from the ground, the magnificent ground.