Time to knock Glazers off their perch

YOU ARE always grateful for any trophy, of course. Even in 2006, when we all took the mickey out of Fergie for his pretence that the League Cup victory made the season a success, we were still very glad we had won it. Indeed, in retrospect, that final can be seen as an especially crucial moment – the day Fergie finally decided to abandon Nistelrooy, and one-up front, and instead put his total trust in the DoRooRon.

So Sunday was hugely enjoyed: but make no mistake, if that three-eared “Hardaker Abortion” is the only silverware in the cupboard come June, we will be mightily gutted. Though there would be a silver lining: it’d mean Fergie wouldn’t quit. His recent interviews, plus Rooney’s recent comments, seem to have made it clear that Fergie won’t allow himself be carried out until he has secured Number 19.

That’s actually how it should be, too, given his 1980s declaration about “knocking Liverpool off their f***cking perch”, since one could argue he wouldn’t have achieved that until number 19 is in the bag.

But let us not stray onto that hardy perennial of a topic or we will be blathering all day. Instead let us pause to praise: Rooney, for his extraordinary flowering into a hardheaded centre forward (that’s six recent nut-goals now, from a man who was once thought of as feet-only); Evra, for his continuing flawlessness and leadership (!); Valencia, for quietly becoming the crossing machine we have lacked since Becks; and Berbatov, who has excelled all month and thus all but silenced the snipers. We shall pass swiftly over the Vidic Controversy, though, as I believe we all had something Wengerishly in our eyes during the fifth minute, didn’t we? Cough cough...

Anyone attending the final would be remiss not to mention the other outstanding feature on Sunday, which was the sea of green ‘n’ gold presented to the visiting Glazer trolls, and the attendant chants. The media has been full of the Newton Heathian protest for a fortnight now and the congratulations have been pleasingly universal.

Incidentally, the chap who conceived the whole thing is too modest even to allow himself to be publicly named, although I can tell you that he happens to run Red Issue’s website. But already the challenge is to move forward to assaulting the Glazers’ wallets as well as merely their eyeballs and earholes. You may recall I wrote, rather wistfully, here a few weeks ago of how the debt crisis was crying out for some kind of Scouse/Manc liaison, not expecting it would come to pass.

Yet here we are today, with the Sons Of Shankly and the various United groups cautiously inching towards each other, trembling hands outstretched for a shake that’d normally be by the throat, with a view to using the March 21 fixture as an opportunity to open a completely new front.

I never thought I’d live long enough to see it. Meanwhile, the likes of Keith Harris, ex-Red director Jim O’Neill and the United Supporters Trust are all clamouring behind the scenes to cobble together a consortium to make an offer to the Glazers, as I suggested here three weeks ago.

But the problematic issue I also flagged up then will now take centre-stage: how to force an owner to sell? Violence apart (and I am told the Balaclava Boys have largely retired) there is only one way – a match boycott. Harris will be offering a guarantee that any boycotter will have his seat returned after a takeover. Will sufficient Reds be brave enough to take the plunge on that basis? It is one thing to don a colourful scarf – quite another to sacrifice your seat. If enough of us don’t answer the call, then we will deserve our fate anyway.

For in the end cowards, like cheats, never prosper. Apart, perhaps, from, Thierry Effing Henry...