Six-shooters good value but crowd braced for ticket hike

REDS have found it difficult to decide who they have more contempt for at Barcode Park this season — Big Fat Sam Allardyce with his ever-open mouth and never-ending uselessness, or the whingeing Geordie muppet-fans and their perennial bloodlust for swinging victims from the Gallows-gate.

Deprived of the chance to be the ones to send Sam on his way on Saturday, we were however quite content instead to inflict more misery on those self-styled Greatest Fans In Britain via six of the best.

Well, two or three of the best, plus a few comedy turns — that second goal will be on many a blooper reel come May, for example.

Will we ever see an opposition defence in such obvious existential crisis as that one again?

Someone wrote recently, apropos the United Christmas party, that you know you’ve got trouble when Rio Ferdinand is the BEST behaved person at a party full of available women; similarly, you know your defence needs a complete overhaul when Rio can swan into your box and bury one.

Incidentally, if we never see that embarrassingly contrived Tevez dummy routine again, it’ll be too soon: what was that rubbish Fergie came out with the other week about our players never indulging in look-at-me solo celebrations? Have a word.

That was not, allegedly, the only rubbish to have been recycled via Fergie’s mouth recently. We learned on our website Friday that Saha had a new and potentially very serious — even career-jeopardising — injury but Fergie breezily brushed aside enquiries that evening claiming it was nothing.

Sunday’s papers eventually revealed there was more to it than that — out until autumn, say the usually better-informed.

I suppose Fergie’s reluctance to discuss the issue is understandable given we are in mid-window, and news of any Saha setback would increase the price of any potential new striker by 50% if it reached the selling club’s ears. Then again, is there anyone out there prepared to sell to us?

One paper has revived the years-old Huntelaar story, someone linked to us about 94 times since 2000, and promise that this time there is truly something to it. But why would we be resorting to him, decent enough player though he may be? Because, it seems, our true and oft-admitted priority targets Berbatov and Anelka were beyond us: Spurs are talking €40million, whilst Fergie’s lunch date Anelka ended up at Chelsea because his wage and fee levels were over our budget.

Yet the puzzled reader, surveying Saturday’s papers’ reporting of United’s latest financial results, might legitimately ask: “hang on a mo’, haven’t we just made a record profit?”

Indeed: but that is if you place any faith in the habitually innumerate reporting of football finances by sports hacks, most of whom do not have a clue. The €80m profit is not ours to spend: almost all of it goes straight to the Glazers’ credit card bill, as will be revealed more obviously when United’s real figures come out via Red Football Limited in the spring.

And as for the ‘record operating profit’ claim, even that’s essentially bogus: it’s about the same figure we declared back in 2004, when the stadium was much smaller, the TV deal much lower, and the on-pitch results much inferior. Yet none of this stopped hacks from wittering on about records, bonanzas and being “top of the football financial league”.

Thus we brace ourselves for not only a massive ticket price hike for 2008/09, but an Arsenal-style mandatory cup ticket upfront-purchase scheme, allegedly being considered by CEO David Gill for season-ticket holders, which would mean some of my mates facing €1,600 demands in May. “Armageddon,” as one described it: much of what remains of the traditional hardcore would simply leave OT for good at that point. And then it’ll truly be ‘Welcome To The Glazerdome’ at last.

By Richard Kurt, whose “Red Army Years” is only available via [e-mail]