No Red faces despite coming off second best

I HATE to say I told you so — and there’s my first fib of the day — but you might recall I did warn last week that the general writing-off by both media and fans of Arsenal this season was an absolute absurdity.

A point Arsene Wenger’s team rather spectacularly underlined on Saturday, as we all saw and freely admit.

And perhaps, as I wrote two weeks ago, we may have been in danger of over-valuing our own true worth — in much the same manner as our shirt sponsors had been doing for the previous two years.

However, that would be a facetiousness too far, for there is no real cause for Red concern. (“And there’s his second lie of the day,” mutters a reader, perhaps)

We were undoubtedly second-best at the Emirates but, boy: what a second-best to be. And what a game.

One of my favourite United terrace-hardy perennials is when there’s occasion to unveil the post-whistle song that goes “We’re proud of you/We’re proud of you”.

You usually hear it when we’ve just accepted that we have lost but have done so without rancour or anger.

It’s the song of honour in defeat, of being bettered, beaten yet unbowed.

Thus it was on Saturday: we were not at our very best but, for once, we decided we would still have a go nonetheless and take Arsenal up on their offer to play real flowing football, as opposed to the various permutations of either attritional tedium or one-sided steamrollering that constitutes 90% of the Premier League’s content.

Moreover, at the risk of sounding as girly as when I’m swooning over Berbatov, I must say I felt a prickling behind the eyes when I heard Fergie, in a once-in-a-decade concession, abandon his usual bad-loser surliness and adopt the Busbyesque stance of simply paying warm tribute to the greatness of the game, and to the spirit in which it was played.

I was actually proud of him as well as of the team, which is not an emotion I am accustomed to feeling.

So it has indeed been a tremendous week to be a Manchester United away day supporter, as I predicted it would be last week, and yet we have ended up without a victory to show for it. (Though Giggsy’s Scottish header felt close to one.)

Back to bad temper and carping next week, especially if lowly Stoke surprise us: just for now, let us bask in the self-satisfied good vibe. After Obama’s victory, that’s certainly been a contagious feeling, hasn’t it?!

Actually, there was one obvious exemption to the new spirit of the age last Wednesday when Glasgow’s useless police decided, once again, to close the gates at 7.40pm, claiming the ground was ‘full’. This despite being faced with hundreds of furious United fans waving tickets for now-empty seats in their snouts.

That there wasn’t a full-on riot at Parkead was a miracle and a tribute to the fact that United fans on their travels are much better behaved, and more restrained in the face of police provocation, than legend would have it.

The ignoble part of me sometimes wishes that, occasionally, we might abandon our good sense and adopt a more Leeds-like approach (in other words, loot ‘n’ pillage at any perceived slight) if only to ensure the authorities take fewer liberties with us in future.

Not least given the scant attention paid to this latest outrage — three lines in the Daily Mail and a half-hearted local rag report.

Football fans are the last consuming collective in the world left who are yet to be afforded the status of customer or client.

Yet we fans spend more per capita on the game than we pay into any other industry you care to mention — with the possible exemption of the alcohol trade for some, admittedly.

I have been writing variants on that line for 15 years now: nothing changes.

Who’da’thunk it’d end up being easier to get a black man into the White House than see a fan treated as a citizen?!

* Richard Kurt, whose classic ‘Red Army Years’ is available via [e-mail]