Terrace Talk: Man United - Eternal hope is the curse of the football man

Whenever United play Palace these days, I always find myself thinking of the loyal Irish Examiner reader out in Clonakilty once described to me as “the only Eagles fan in Ireland”. (Hello there, James.)

He’s a man ‘approaching fullest maturity’, as one might politely say, who will have seen a lot of Palace’s best displays going back decades.

But surely this connoisseur must’ve appreciated few of them as much as he will have done Saturday’s.

Rarely has any Palace team come to Old Trafford and made United look so toothless and pedestrian; rarely has any created more chances than the Reds; rarely has any come as close to emulating the great ‘banner match’ exploit of December 1989.

Yes, folks, we’re going back there (again). “Ta-ra, Fergie” an’ all that; the shocking 1-2 home defeat to Palace that saw Alex’s career hanging by a bedsheet.

And as Saturday’s match grimly spluttered towards its miserable goalless conclusion, I found myself wondering what would happen if Palace snatched a late winner. 

Would that have finally plunged us into a potential ‘terminal crisis’ mode, as did Palace’s winner back in 1989?

Fergie did ride out his autumn crisis. United famously recovered that season to win the FA Cup and kickstart two decades of glory but no one — not even José — is thinking that sort of thing will ever be back on the cards. We do, after all, live in a Manchester City world now.

Nevertheless, shamefully, I found myself thinking that it might be best for all of us if Palace nicked one at the death. Preferably via Zaha, who is one of the many examples of United’s serial personnel management failures this decade. Only then, by having our wretched underperforming overpaid noses rubbed into the filth we have produced, would we all wake up and finally accept this particular mutt needs taking to the vets for the final time.

Most otherwise decent football fans experience such moments at critical junctures, and they are rightly embarrassed by them.

No matter what the long-term good might arguably be, you never wish for a short-term defeat.

And if you are in the ‘match moment’ as a fan, you are like an Exocet chasing a target; you are locked-on, single-mindedly seeking the all-encompassing flesh-tingling heat of The Goal.

And yet there I was — and I know I wasn’t alone — toying with the idea that it’d serve us all right to receive a last-minute smack.

I could go on and on here, and detail the depths of the gut-rotting disgust I feel for roughly three-quarters of Old Trafford’s current football employees, but I’m sure we all want to just forget it and move on to tomorrow.

Yes, it’ll be Young Boys against Old Men, but at least it’ll be relief from the ongoing joyless trudge of the Premiership.

Hard to believe, isn’t it, in the wake of the City and Palace matches, that this squad is the same bunch of charmless nerks who somehow pulled three points out of Turin?

Yet here we are, unexpectedly well-placed to progress in the competition we all care about the most

I was about to write “should the unthinkable happen” — i.e. that United lose — but, then, these days, nothing is “unthinkable” anymore, is it?

Getting knocked out by Seville last spring was mistakenly deemed “unthinkable” beforehand. In fact, the only thing that’s truly nearly impossible to think about is this squad and manager ever managing to pull this season around. And yet they said that back in December 1989 too...

Eternal hope — it’s the curse of the football man. And it’s why we keep going, and why you and I are still here on this page, somehow finding time to care about people and things we should really be despising. Magic, isn’t it?