The Manager
The front-man of the club, the face of the team who is constantly interviewed before, after and between games. When a team is playing well and on television regularly, their manager is seen all the time.
Since the Premiership began and Sky pumped in the millions, the media interest in football has exploded and we are bombarded with football. Mostly this is wonderful and brings fantastic entertainment to millions of people. There is however the downside of seeing certain managers on our screens constantly, either whingeing about refereeing decisions or pleading ignorance about their teams’ unsportsmanlike traits.
Alex Ferguson over many years has clearly demonstrated his arrogance and ungracious approach on hundreds of occasions. His respect for referees and other managers is reasonable, on the condition that he wins and they lose. When Man Utd are defeated the list of factors that went against them sometimes appears endless:
Decisions of the referee, time not added on at the end, tactics of the other manager, opposing players fouling his team, the journalist interviewing him asking the wrong questions, the state of the pies in the shop, the weather.
Some years ago, Man Utd had an appalling first half against Southampton at The Dell and had conceded three goals before half-time. Ferguson made his team change their shirts at half-time because he blamed the colours on their away kit, making it hard for his players to see each other.
Ferguson has repeatedly fallen out with one TV channel and Radio Station after another. I lose track of who he is and isn’t prepared to do interviews with these days because at one time they may have dared question his managerial decisions and he threw his toys out of the pram.
The way he manages his team also at times leaves a very bad taste in the mouth. Haranguing the referee has become an art form at Man Utd and the way he controls his volatile characters from going over the top is simple; He doesn’t. See further down for details on Roy Keane in particular.
Ferguson and Man Utd fans may say ‘Who gives a shit?’ when it has got them so much success. I am simply trying to compare their manager with Liverpool’s managers in their great eras. Bob Paisley and Kenny Dalglish may have had their character flaws but neither behaved in the way Ferguson did with such blatant disrespect for so much about the game of football.
Money
The root of all evil according to some. Money certainly can bring out the worst in people and can cause enormous jealousy throughout the world. Football fans are no different and can resent rich clubs buying all the good players, whilst theirs struggles in the bargain basement transfer market and for free transfers.
Liverpool was not a poor club in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Supported by the wealthy Littlewoods family, they were able to compete with the top clubs in England for the signatures of quality players. In 1977, they signed Kenny Dalglish for a then British record fee of £440,000. 10 years later they broke the record again with the £1.9M purchase of Peter Beardsley from Newcastle. During that 10 years however, Middlesbrough, Notts Forest, Man City, Wolves and Man Utd all broke the transfer record with purchases. Liverpool whilst a wealthy club were not much different from quite a number of others.
In contrast, Man Utd in the last 15 years have been the flagship of blatant commercial greed. In 1991, they were floated on the stock market and millions was poured into the club to begin the building of the much despised corporate monster. Man Utd fans rejoiced at this injection of cash and most were unconcerned that their club was now a pure profit-making organisation. The size of their transfers in the last 5 years has been undignified and almost crass in comparison to other British clubs: Juan Sebastian Veron £28M, Ruud Van Nistelrooy £19M, Rio Ferdinand £30M, Wayne Rooney £25M. Even Chelsea with all Roman’s millions have not yet surpassed the British Record of £30M spent on a defender 4 years ago.
Man Utd’s uncouth financial behaviour doesn’t end in the transfer market. In 2000, Man Utd rejected to take part in the FA Cup just in case their players had too much fixture congestion ahead of the financially lucrative FIFA World Club Championship in Brazil. They pulled out of the oldest and best knockout competition in the world in favour of trying to expand their commercial awareness in South America. How sad it was that they got stuffed by Vasco da Gama with Edmundo providing some of the best entertainment I think I will ever witness on a football pitch. As a result, the FA Cup has still not completely regained its status, perhaps it never will. Man Utd have continued to show disdain for the tournament ever since, beginning the trend of fielding weakened sides in matches, so inferior in their opinion is the FA Cup. When they reach the final every now and then, they may at last trouble themselves to play a decent team. Not that it was much good last year of course when they lost to Arsenal on penalties. Oh dear!
In the summer of 2005, Malcolm Glazer and his family took control of the club and removed it from public ownership. This was not an illegal or despicable act as many Man Utd fans would have you believe. A risk that any public limited company takes is that shares can be bought by anyone, and if you acquire a shareholding of more than 50%, you are effectively in control of the company. Man Utd fans were in uproar at this, moaning about how could such a thing possibly be allowed to happen etc etc. Now they’ve just spent another £12M on 2 defenders, it’s incredible how quiet they’ve become.
Tom Bower of the Guardian summed up Man Utd’s greed beautifully. He said ‘The rot within English football is epitomised by Manchester United's recent history. Unlike the major Spanish clubs, which remain as cooperatives under the loving management of their fans and local authorities, Manchester United was allowed to become a spectator’s toy.’
The Players
Greame Souness was probably the toughest player from Liverpool’s golden era. A passionate midfielder with aggression and determination at the forefront of his game. He was a feared opponent but a great and well respected player.
The most obvious comparison to this is Man Utd’s golden midfielder, Roy Keane. Determination and aggression could also be used to describe Keane but with the emphasis very much on aggression. This is a man who deliberately set out to badly injure another player (Alf Inge Haaland) in 2001 and admitted as much in his autobiography. The tackle for the few that have never seen it was so bad that it effectively ended Haaland’s career, who has barely played a game since.
Two years before this, Keane had led an angry mob charging on referee Andy D’Urso after awarding a penalty against Man Utd. Hostility of this type has been common among Man Utd players over recent years but this was the most significant and vile example of it. Despite huge criticism from across the football world, it is something that their manager has never condemned in the slightest.
In 2002, Keane, playing in the World Cup for his country, walked out of the squad following an argument with the Irish Manager, Mick McCarthy. He walked away from the biggest sporting event in the world. The players in the World Cup are watched and envied by billions are the luckiest of perhaps all sportsmen to be involved in such an event. Roy Keane however, in his eyes, is bigger than all of that and left his Irish team to struggle without him whilst he flew home in a childish sulk.
That sulk has just repeated itself, three years later, following a bust-up with Alex Ferguson. Keane walked out on Man Utd in a moments notice because clearly something wasn’t as he wanted. Rather than accept that he can’t have everything he wants all the time, he left whilst under contract but by mutual consent.
Dan Warren of BBC Sport wrote this about Keane; ‘Most football fans like their psychos hard but fair. And they will realise the sight of Keane intentionally slamming his studs into Haaland's knee has no place in the beautiful game.’
The Fans
Big clubs have thousands of fans, not only from all over the country but from all over the world. Liverpool are no exception and have huge fan bases, particularly in Scandinavia, Ireland and the Far East. What separates Liverpool, Arsenal and Chelsea fans though with the loyal followers at Old Trafford is the real commitment to their team, in terms of match attendance.
Surrey is often derided by other supporters as the home of Man Utd fans, rather than Manchester. I’m sure however, that many Liverpool fans also live in Surrey. Many Man Utd fans also live in various parts of the UK and do attend the matches in person. It is of course the unbelievable number of people who claim to be fans of Man Utd who have never even been to Old Trafford. Not once, never. They are typically in their 30’s or 40’s. Many have reasonable jobs that pay good money and not one time in the whole of their life have they ever been bothered to part with around £35 for a ticket. This is not a myth. I have met more people that fit into this category than similar armchair fans from all other clubs put together and multiplied by 10. If they make a conscious choice never to visit their team, then they can still call themselves football fans but not fans of any particular team, especially of Man Utd.
This doesn’t however stop them all coming out of the woodwork on a Monday morning putting on their fake Liam Gallagher accent when they’ve won 1-0 against West Brom thanks to a penalty awarded by… you guessed it Mike Riley, in collaboration with Ruud Van Nistelrooy.
Europe
Liverpool in Europe during the 1970’s and 1980’s. Great occasions, and on the whole most people wanted Liverpool to win when playing against foreign opposition. They were representing England and other than a minority of Evertonians, most Mancs and some Cockneys, they were on the whole widely supported.
Compare that to 1999. Man Utd are in the European Cup Final. The first English team for 14 years to even get to the final. They are playing the Germans, yes the Germans from Bayern Munich. I’m watching the game in a sports bar somewhere in the Midlands. Bayern go 1-0 ahead and 50% of the pub jumps up in delight. Man Utd get 2 of the ugliest goals you’ll ever see, late in the game to win the cup. I see grown men leaving the pub, head in the hands, almost in tears. And I say it once again, this is an English team against the Germans! Surely we should be supporting the Mancs on this occasion. Not it would seem by many, including myself of course. The reasons for this have already been laid out above.
Such is the desire for Man Utd to lose in Europe that there are people who take great delight whenever they fail. There is a huge Liverpool fan I know whose highlight of each year is when a European team knocks Man Utd out of the Champions League. He retains highlights recorded from these matches and watches them again and again rejoicing in their downfall. He has had a t-shirt printed with logos of Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, Porto etc and the years that they have knocked Man Utd out. He wears it with pride once a year when he has another name printed on to it. You might think how sad that is but I do only wear it once a year.
Talking about Europe, after that ugliest of wins, didn’t a certain Ferguson receive a knighthood as a result of winning that competition? Pride for Britain and all that. In the 90’s it would seem that that is the case, win it once and become a Sir. Two decades earlier, it wasn’t enough to win it 3 times and receive one – I’m sure you know what I mean.
Summary
You may have forgotten the original question that I asked that started this piece. Were we as hated as the Mancs? Don’t be silly. It was a rhetorical question. You knew the answer before I started.