ChrisBlade
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- Aug 20, 2009
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The Likely Feelings of the Average United Fan
The last few days have all felt painfully familiar. While I cannot claim to know how the majority of us feel, if I am anything to go by as a representative sample, we are currently playing out a lot of our worst fears in a very worrying scenario of deja vu.
The Ched Evans verdict has left most of us stunned. I won't go into any details as it has been done to death already. Suffice it to say that in terms of its timing and its relevance to our season it is very reminiscent of the Tevez verdict. That one came very late in the season as well, and if anything, was even more stunning in how it was clearly and blatantly wrong. At least with Ched, there is reasonable doubt as to whether Ched went down correctly and Clayton McD should have done so, too, or whether both should have walked free. With Tevez, there really was no doubt as to the verdict being perversely wrong, no ifs and buts.
This being about United and my personal feelings for Ched aside, the moment I heard the guilty verdict I feared that this might do to us what the Tevez verdict did. I was refreshing about a hundred times a minute when my five-year old said: "Dad, why are you looking like that?
"Like what, Paddy boy?"
"So serious."
"Oh, Ched Evans has his court case today and I am checking for the verdict," said I.
He smiled knowingly and said: "Oh, and if it goes well, he can play tomorrow. And if it goes wrong, the goal machine has a time out from playing?"
I smiled and said "yep, some time-out, that. Will be a couple of years..."
Not for one minute did I think at that moment that ten minutes later my boy's first ever United hear-say hero would be a convicted rapist. Very sad, on so many levels. But as starts to what will hopefully be a United life, I reckon he could do worse. It will teach him about how it will be, the regularity and inevitability of loss in life. "I never promised you a rose garden".
He obviously has no concept of crime, and he invented and accepted his time-out concept in great cheer. All we now need, in his world, is a "new goal machine."
Just like 2007, I knew after the verdict, our season would likely not run as smoothly afterwards. then as now, I felt cursed, wanting to punch the wall or my life-size Mike Dean cut-out.
MK Dons was a predictable wipe out. I knew we would most likely lose. Seeing the ground at 2.30 on the saturday, I felt sick. It had this awful, sick to the stomach "neutral ground" feel to it. It felt like the new Wembley, like play-off finals, like "damn, we never get anything at souless grounds like this and anyway this isn't what football is all about".
And so we go to the final two games.
Staying with the groundhog day theme, anyone who has been a Blade for a while will have easy analogies. Glasses will usually feel half-empty for many, with Stevenage reminding us of Wigan at home, a must win game against arguably poorer opposition with everything to play for that is live on Sky. There is optimism and hope beforehand, lots of endeavour, only to ultimately fail by the width of a post.
With Exeter away then conveniently turning into another away day like at Crystal Palace in 2009. Fun but futile.
So what can be done about all of that, except hope for divine intervention and a positive Brentford result?
Well, I tell you what...
The Alternative Universe - Heal Your Life
Lie down right now. Wherever you are. Close your eyes. Imagine the most corny of esoteric elevator music imaginable. There is a floating female vice, Louise Hay-style. "Imagine them all in one room," the voice instructs you. The ginger twat Hopkin, Dave Jones, too. Graham Poll and Marc Overmars. Mike Dean and David Unsworth. But instead of dreaming about torch paper and fuses or buses crashing into them, breathe in, breathe out. No more "we did the tongue thing, we did the eye thing, but the job still went to them damn frogs..." Let it go, Louie. Let it go. Feel light and breezy and ... forgive them all. Let the past go. Break their grip on your life. Live in the ... now.
When you re-appear from your slumber, you will realize that on Saturday there was a game of football but it wasn't in soulless Milton Keynes. No, we actually played at Stevenage in the play-off semi-final first leg.
We were poor, no doubt. What is worth, Ched Evans did his hamstring after about 14 minutes. Out for the season, out of contract in June, with no intention of re-signing for United. His goal against Orient will be his epitaph, shirt wheeling around his head, milking the roar of the crowd before demurely accepting the most predictable yellow card in the history of football (professional or otherwise).
But poor as we were, we hung on for 0-0. Next Saturday, we have the second leg of the play-offs against Stevenage. It is finely poised at 0-0, but a win takes us through to the promotion play-off final.
The FA, meanwhile, have just completed a thorough investigation of their internal workings. It has yielded life-long suspensions for Mike Dean and a number of other corrupt officials. Trevor Brooking has been sacked as well. The recommendations of the investigation report have been acted on. Sheffield Wednesday have been disqualified from the play-offs for crimes against football and a team of brave thespian ideals has been given a bye to this year's play-off final. The chosen team is Exeter City, the Grecians. It has also been decreed that it would not be fair for United having to go through their "neutral ground without ever scoring nightmare" again. So the final will be held at Exeter's ground instead.
Presto. No more bad memories. No more groundhog day. You have healed your life.
It is a first ever play-off campaign for second spot. A semi-final home match against Stevenage with a final at Exeter to come. Surely we can do it if we manage to make that little leap of faith and not compare ourselves to past failures all the time?
As for my little boy? He considered it severely unfair that I did not get a ticket for Exeter away. But he'll still grow up a Blade, regardless of what happens... So if anyone at the club reads this, do it for him! At five, he is a clean sheet of paper. He may have lost the goal machine to an unexpected uneasy time-out, he may disagree with any set of rules that prevents him or indeed his dad from getting what they want (to him dad is the most loyal supporter there is - despite my assurances that this is far from the truth) but and it is a big BUT he does not have any precedents of failure yet nor any deranged sister-in-laws who flood the house with useless Louise Hay tapes and what have you.
So let's all ensure that he starts on the right footing. By winning this play-off campaign against two pretty average League 1 sides and getting the glory this season, the team, we as a club and as fans and, of course, Danny Wilson so richly deserve.
End of communiqué.
The last few days have all felt painfully familiar. While I cannot claim to know how the majority of us feel, if I am anything to go by as a representative sample, we are currently playing out a lot of our worst fears in a very worrying scenario of deja vu.
The Ched Evans verdict has left most of us stunned. I won't go into any details as it has been done to death already. Suffice it to say that in terms of its timing and its relevance to our season it is very reminiscent of the Tevez verdict. That one came very late in the season as well, and if anything, was even more stunning in how it was clearly and blatantly wrong. At least with Ched, there is reasonable doubt as to whether Ched went down correctly and Clayton McD should have done so, too, or whether both should have walked free. With Tevez, there really was no doubt as to the verdict being perversely wrong, no ifs and buts.
This being about United and my personal feelings for Ched aside, the moment I heard the guilty verdict I feared that this might do to us what the Tevez verdict did. I was refreshing about a hundred times a minute when my five-year old said: "Dad, why are you looking like that?
"Like what, Paddy boy?"
"So serious."
"Oh, Ched Evans has his court case today and I am checking for the verdict," said I.
He smiled knowingly and said: "Oh, and if it goes well, he can play tomorrow. And if it goes wrong, the goal machine has a time out from playing?"
I smiled and said "yep, some time-out, that. Will be a couple of years..."
Not for one minute did I think at that moment that ten minutes later my boy's first ever United hear-say hero would be a convicted rapist. Very sad, on so many levels. But as starts to what will hopefully be a United life, I reckon he could do worse. It will teach him about how it will be, the regularity and inevitability of loss in life. "I never promised you a rose garden".
He obviously has no concept of crime, and he invented and accepted his time-out concept in great cheer. All we now need, in his world, is a "new goal machine."
Just like 2007, I knew after the verdict, our season would likely not run as smoothly afterwards. then as now, I felt cursed, wanting to punch the wall or my life-size Mike Dean cut-out.
MK Dons was a predictable wipe out. I knew we would most likely lose. Seeing the ground at 2.30 on the saturday, I felt sick. It had this awful, sick to the stomach "neutral ground" feel to it. It felt like the new Wembley, like play-off finals, like "damn, we never get anything at souless grounds like this and anyway this isn't what football is all about".
And so we go to the final two games.
Staying with the groundhog day theme, anyone who has been a Blade for a while will have easy analogies. Glasses will usually feel half-empty for many, with Stevenage reminding us of Wigan at home, a must win game against arguably poorer opposition with everything to play for that is live on Sky. There is optimism and hope beforehand, lots of endeavour, only to ultimately fail by the width of a post.
With Exeter away then conveniently turning into another away day like at Crystal Palace in 2009. Fun but futile.
So what can be done about all of that, except hope for divine intervention and a positive Brentford result?
Well, I tell you what...
The Alternative Universe - Heal Your Life
Lie down right now. Wherever you are. Close your eyes. Imagine the most corny of esoteric elevator music imaginable. There is a floating female vice, Louise Hay-style. "Imagine them all in one room," the voice instructs you. The ginger twat Hopkin, Dave Jones, too. Graham Poll and Marc Overmars. Mike Dean and David Unsworth. But instead of dreaming about torch paper and fuses or buses crashing into them, breathe in, breathe out. No more "we did the tongue thing, we did the eye thing, but the job still went to them damn frogs..." Let it go, Louie. Let it go. Feel light and breezy and ... forgive them all. Let the past go. Break their grip on your life. Live in the ... now.
When you re-appear from your slumber, you will realize that on Saturday there was a game of football but it wasn't in soulless Milton Keynes. No, we actually played at Stevenage in the play-off semi-final first leg.
We were poor, no doubt. What is worth, Ched Evans did his hamstring after about 14 minutes. Out for the season, out of contract in June, with no intention of re-signing for United. His goal against Orient will be his epitaph, shirt wheeling around his head, milking the roar of the crowd before demurely accepting the most predictable yellow card in the history of football (professional or otherwise).
But poor as we were, we hung on for 0-0. Next Saturday, we have the second leg of the play-offs against Stevenage. It is finely poised at 0-0, but a win takes us through to the promotion play-off final.
The FA, meanwhile, have just completed a thorough investigation of their internal workings. It has yielded life-long suspensions for Mike Dean and a number of other corrupt officials. Trevor Brooking has been sacked as well. The recommendations of the investigation report have been acted on. Sheffield Wednesday have been disqualified from the play-offs for crimes against football and a team of brave thespian ideals has been given a bye to this year's play-off final. The chosen team is Exeter City, the Grecians. It has also been decreed that it would not be fair for United having to go through their "neutral ground without ever scoring nightmare" again. So the final will be held at Exeter's ground instead.
Presto. No more bad memories. No more groundhog day. You have healed your life.
It is a first ever play-off campaign for second spot. A semi-final home match against Stevenage with a final at Exeter to come. Surely we can do it if we manage to make that little leap of faith and not compare ourselves to past failures all the time?
As for my little boy? He considered it severely unfair that I did not get a ticket for Exeter away. But he'll still grow up a Blade, regardless of what happens... So if anyone at the club reads this, do it for him! At five, he is a clean sheet of paper. He may have lost the goal machine to an unexpected uneasy time-out, he may disagree with any set of rules that prevents him or indeed his dad from getting what they want (to him dad is the most loyal supporter there is - despite my assurances that this is far from the truth) but and it is a big BUT he does not have any precedents of failure yet nor any deranged sister-in-laws who flood the house with useless Louise Hay tapes and what have you.
So let's all ensure that he starts on the right footing. By winning this play-off campaign against two pretty average League 1 sides and getting the glory this season, the team, we as a club and as fans and, of course, Danny Wilson so richly deserve.
End of communiqué.
