The morning after the Night before.
We’ve all had them nights out that have been too good to believe, the ones when you’ve pulled the fittest bird or the bouncers have tried it on and you and your pals have put them the right in their place or preferably on their arse.
Those nights that you wake up the following day and feel like everything will be just a little bit different from now on.
We’ve also all had them nights out when you wake up in the cold light of day and you wonder to yourself what the hell went on and what am I going to do to deal with the fallout.
Honestly writing this on Wednesday afternoon after a glorious Sunday afternoon marching through sunny Manchester, I’m not quite sure which hangover we are dealing with.
Before we deal with the fallout, let’s rewind back to the start and concentrate on the good.
The feeling meeting the 1958 lads in the Abercrombie Sunday lunchtime we all felt what has become very familiar, you hope for a good turnout but your never quite sure, however the bonds built with other clubs and the support shown from the likes of Hammers United and the increased media profile had already took the cause to another level.
Catching up with a few lads I’d not seen in the flesh for a while, my ears kept pricking up at shouts of “We all hate Leeds and Yorkshire bastard”.
Amazingly we had a lad in our midst who decided to cross the nastiest divide to march with United fans purely through the hatred of modern football and where it is taken us.
Having had to walk past the peacock before games at Elland Road many times.
I honestly still can’t get my head round it, it also makes me very sad that a dirty Leeds fan can do that, while our fanbase is still niggling at each other over their own definition of Unity.
The march itself for goes into the top three alongside the first we did against Norwich and the Liverpool on at the beginning of Ten Hag.
Seeing lads and lasses of all ages come together and share the love for our club is what we are all about.
There have been reports of 5, 10 and 20 thousand people, I honestly don’t know but what I can say thank-you for coming and joining us and please never give up and think its pointless because the day the majority of fans do that, that is the end and the Glazers have finally won.
Now the bad, Big Jim’s reactionary interview and the Billy Smarts new stadium.
The big pick up for me from the Neville interview was that Ratcliffe isn’t getting briefed and despite a new management team in place the club is still riddled with liars and Yes men.
Hidden behind the main headlines the most worrying points for me were, it took Neville to point out that the 40K for ex-players could easily have been raised by other means such as a black-tie dinner event and also the discussion regarding ticket prices and Ratcliffe pronouncing that £66 was face value.
Both these points highlight clearly that he isn’t briefed by his team and more importantly fan consultation is clearly not on the agenda.
If Neville can come up with answer to raise 40K that quickly, why weren’t we asked how we could avoid getting rid of European collections with maybe a £10 pound surcharge on top of the ticket to cover the cost, we could have suggested putting and extra £20 a seat on the top hospitality seats to avoid the failed £66 project.
Like you always hear in politics charge the people who can afford so the kids and old people are protected.
I know we have the Fans Forum but its not working, they need to speak to us.
Then you have stadium, no fan consultation, no history, and a big fuck off tent.
I honestly don’t know what else to say, other than I won’t believe it’ll happen until the diggers move in.
Ratcliffe and the club are now in a win, win position, they have put it in the government’s hands, if they regenerate the Trafford Area the club will inevitably benefit, If Kier Starmer puts the stops on the regeneration, the club will just say well we tried and have been letdown by those in power.
I’ll write more about it when I get my head round it but the club need to be held accountable for what they have done here, this isn’t the days of Sir Matt and Sir Bobby on the board or even that bastard Gill and Sir Alex, these executives will be gone long before us and we must fight to ensure we are not forced out.
A couple of final points on Sunday, whoever bought the fireworks they were brilliant but one landed right at my feet by the Tollgate and I’m not ashamed to say I absolutely shit myself and more seriously as the protest got to Sir Matt Busby Way I left and went on ahead to see what was going on the forecourt, expecting apathy from day trippers and looking for YouTubers peddling their trade I was absolutely overwhelmed by the numbers straddling either side of the road and waiting on the forecourt to join the main procession, it something I’ve not seen before and clear indication that we have the numbers for this fight.
So, in true morning after the night before fashion, Sunday was a reboot, nothing will be ever quite the same again and we must not lose this momentum and beat these bastards.
To quote Sham 69.
If the kids are United, they will never be divided.
