United we stand in our travails

IT’S been a week dominated by news of a tidal wave of toxic red sludge sweeping through benighted streets.

But enough of the protesting Scousers – how are those poor Hungarians doing? We shouldn’t laugh. As I write, various ageing Suits are in the London High Court battling over the future of Liverpool FC. I haven’t been this gripped by a footballing court case since Fergie and his ex-mates from Coolmore were going head to head.

Yet as we United fans tantalise ourselves with the possibilities of nine-point deductions, six-month legal actions and generalised civil warfare, the question poses itself: who’s really worse off, Liverpool or United? After all, there’s every chance that, with one legal bound, the Scousers could soon be free, heading once more for sunlit uplands.

Whereas what prospect is there for us? The green ‘n’ gold movement is, as I sadly predicted, almost dead in any meaningful sense. Last week’s results announcement inspired disbelief and rage, true, but that was soon replaced by shrugging resignation.

The Glazers, in some ways, have pulled it off. Unless the likely imminent double-dip recession results in swathes of fans being priced out of Old Trafford, you can clearly see that they are in a position to bleed us dry for years to come. We are making record underlying operating profits, yet the prospect is that the Floridian monsters will continue to drain off most of these for many seasons to come. How many great player imports, League titles, and European Cups will that lack of investment cost us? Finally, the dread 2017 repayment deadline will eventually arrive, and then what? The fear, inevitably, is that a meltdown will take place that’ll make the current shenanigans at Anfield look like a mere bagatelle.

Bobby Charlton popped up on TV yesterday expressing what was clearly a sincere wish that LFC escape from the mire, and the intervention did him credit, however ironic. Of course, Bobby emerged in an era when MUFC and LFC were – gulp – friends, sharing a common county, a sense of anti-London mission, and a managerial pair who genuinely loved each other. Forty years of increasing mutual loathing then intervened, of course, but as I have noted recently, you sense a thaw in relations these days.

Mind you, that news doesn’t appear to have reached the ears of Our Rio, who has been angrily laying into Alan Hansen this week for the sin of suggesting that the hapless defender needs to start putting club before country.

You can only enjoy the irony that, on this issue, every United fan is in agreement with Hansen. (Added irony: Hansen was a boyhood United fan.)

I note, however, that he has avoided replying to someone with a properly unimpeachable right to preach, the former England and United centre-half David Sadler, who spoke in a similar vein to Hansen but focussed more on the issue of the national captaincy, stating that Gerrard should have kept the armband.

Not that I care particularly, as Ingerlund issues serve as just mild diversionary entertainment when United aren’t playing. But the fact surely is that the Rio Ferdinand era is all but over, and the sooner we get Smalling and Johnny Evans bedded down into extended runs the better. Ferdinand might yet still fetch a decent fee too, and I am told he would have been discreetly offered out this summer had he not been crocked.

After all, a club losing £80m a year shouldn’t really relish paying £120,000 a week to a mere part-timer, should it?

He could do them all a favour and take Eoin Hargreaves with him too…