Keep your views on G Nev, the Man United protest and anything else to theeditor@football365.com.
Neville and United disgrace
I for one think it’s a disgrace what happened yesterday regarding the game being postponed. This is a utd problem that the media are trying to make an everyone problem. Do you think the other fans in the league all love their owners? Utd fans showed yesterday that little thought was taken into account how their actions yesterday effected other clubs and the competition. Showed in abundance they only care about themselves much like the owners they are trying to remove. Because they’re sitting 2nd they didn’t really care what happened yesterday game wise and should be punished as a club for it. Gary Neville for me has massively stepped over a line this past year and has to hold his hands up to fanning the fire to this, I believe his actions have been massively unprofessional and for sky to let him use their platform to push this agenda is shocking. If Utd want to get rid of their owners that’s fine but police officers potentially injured, missiles being thrown and general mob mentality is not the way too do it. Utd fans have shown that they are selfish in their actions because as long as they have qualified for Europe to hell with everyone else, we want our owners out. Much like the owners wanting to take their ball and go home with the super league. The Utd fans just did the exact same thing by acting for their own self interests, not caring what happens to the rest of the league. In summary I believe Utd as a club should be punished by the premier league and quite frankly Gary Neville should be sacked. And pro protest pundits saying live on tv you always get some idiots at a protest are basically saying they are aware people might get hurt if this gets out of hand and have chose to promote it regardless. This mob mentality of getting the pitch forks out and trying to solve every issue around the world with marches and inevitably some sort of violence and injury needs to stop.
JB
OPINION: Man United are a zombie club; can fans change that?
I feel like a single voice in this matter but why are so many pundits and fans not contending yesterday’s protest?
Protesting outside the stadium is fine, it’s understandable, but breaking into the stadium, causing damage to equipment and it ended with a police officer getting slashed in the face according to reports, yet I see Gary Neville and co simply accept it all as correct, not for me, and I won’t change my view
Mikey, CFC
Ulterior motives…
Yes the majority of the protesters outside Old Trafford on Sunday were voicing their opinion for change at the club, and rightly so. But surely I’m not the only one who thinks that those who attacked the police, and invaded the stadium and pitch used this as an excuse and were only doing so with the sole purpose of stopping the game and therefore stopping Man City winning the league this weekend? The idiotic and ultimately futile scenes inside reminded me of the shocking scenes not that long ago in Washington D.C. Crazy how this was allowed not once but twice!?
Richie
We’re pathetic
Wow. Just wow.
On a weekend when F365 boycotted social media, because of abuse, it sticks Man U fans on top of its winners section for having a game called off.
Do you really think the game would have been called off if the protests had been purely peaceful?
No, it was called off because of violence and the threat of violence.
One person on Sky attempted to speak out against this yesterday, but he was quickly put back in his box. Graeme Souness. And F365 decides to have a go at him when putting Man U fans as winners.
I wouldn’t like to be a cop with a slashed face reading this website this morning.
Fans of a club currently second in the league and heading for a European final, in no small part because of the player bought for over 80 million quid last year, feel so entitled to win trophies that they invaded their own stadium and rioted. And yes, it was riotous behaviour.
Pathetic by F365. Pathetic by Sky.
In any normal world, the game would be awarded to Liverpool and Man U would be facing a points deduction. But when you have Gary Neville and Co excusing the behaviour – and that is exactly what he did, repeatedly…’I can’t condone, but…’. How about condemning it? Nah, man of the people Neville likes his new-found twitter popularity.
I had hoped that F365 would be different. But no.
Well, here’s to the next set of fans slashing a cop, invading a stadium and having a game called off because they are upset. Sure it will only be a few, the majority are good ‘uns.
Bollox.
Eoghan
Old Trafford farce
I’m trying to form an opinion on the farce at Old Trafford that isn’t affected by my disappointment that the first time I have left the house to be sociable in over a year was ruined to some degree by the fact that the game didn’t go ahead, and my dislike for the team that resides there.
What is doing my head in about the fallout from the ESL failure is that I am seeing people make bullshit suggestions (wage cap, 50+1 rule for example) that have no grounding in how the world of professional sport works in 2021. Let’s take the 50+1 rule and look at it. It’s a nice idea, of course, but it cannot work in England because the window of opportunity to do this in was smashed decades ago. England is not Germany, more’s the pity. United are worth – apparently – around £3bn. Let’s just say that a miracle does occur and a fans consortium manages to cobble together the £1.5bn or so to gain 51% – who TF is going to pay the remainder for a business that they have no real say in how it is run? It’s not going to happen.
A wage cap is anti-capitalist (no bad thing IMO, but capitalism rules), and unless every country in the World signs up to it, it cannot be effective. And even if that should be achieved, all it will take is one player to challenge the ruling in court and the whole thing will unravel.
So can we stop pretending that there is a simple, off the peg solution to the problems facing the game?
The FA will have to come down hard on this, and I mean hard, or it will happen time and time again. United need to be punished in a meaningful way, because they failed to control their fans (and it appears that their employees may have been complicit in what happened) and this failure led to a scheduled game being called off unnecessarily.
People need to understand that this sets a dangerous precedent. The hundred or so fans who invaded the stadium and the 900 or so outside that joined in are speaking and acting for the millions of United fans worldwide. What gives them the right to do this? What gives them the right to take action that could (and should) have severe consequences for the football team?
People also need to understand that the real villains of this piece are not the club owners, but those that have allowed these types of owners on their watch. Fuck the FA, fuck UEFA and fuck FIFA. They have allowed finances to dominate football (and have filled their own pockets into the bargain). It’s money first, and everything else second at best. The ESL was a flawed concept, but IMO everyone has been gaslight here. It was an attempt from (some of) those who provide the actual football to remove some of the power from the c*nts that have fucked up the game. I am not saying there was anything noble in it, but the idea that the demise of the ESL is a victory for the fans is gaslighting at its very best, brought to you by people who have taken millions out the game and stuck it in their bank accounts.
There is only one course of action that will have any real affect on the money men that own United, and that’s to hit them in the pocket. United fans have had 15 years to boycott the club and stop giving the money to them, but being entertained (apart from the Mourinho years, obviously) was more important than ANYTHING else. Like it or not, if you choose to spend your money on lining the Glazers pockets, then you are a part of the problem, because without that, the Glazers go away.
But this kind of unity and solidarity doesn’t exist, does it?
If there is money to be made (and my, there is money to be made), then profit will trump everything.
So can we stop with all the happy clappy horseshit?
Mat (those fans lost most of their moral high ground when they stopped protesting peacefully)
What’s the goal?
Not surprising that there are a lot of conflicting opinions about yesterday’s events. As a Liverpool fan, I wholeheartedly support the United fans’ actions yesterday – all except the clowns who injured a security guard and decided to smash up some equipment in the ground. It certainly demonstrates that fans do still have a certain amount of power when we unite.
But it’s important that there is a goal at the end of this. Liverpool’s owners have been significantly better for the club than the Glazers have for United, but after the attempted breakaway I can’t see any way that I’ll ever trust them again. But removing one set of wealth extracting owners to get another one in is a gamble at best.
So what should be the aim? For me, it’s the fan ownership model along the lines of the German clubs. Make it clear at every protest that this is what we as fans want. With a PM who likes to jump on various bandwagons once he’s seen where they’re headed it might be possible.
Difficult to see how it would happen without some form of compensation for the existing owners. Perhaps the government could finance various supporter’s trusts to obtain 51% ownership. And it might be in order to leave the 6 breakaway clubs out – their punishment for the attempt to leave is that they lose 51% of the club – it’s given to a supporter’s trust. That feels like an appropriate punishment.
Kieran, LFC
We really DON’T care
To Mark Lackey in particular, and others expressing the same sentiments.
You really don’t get it do you? We (United Fans) really do not care if the Premier League sanction us, fine us, deduct us points. Hell, they can relegate us if they so wish! In fact bring it on pleaseI Anything that speeds up the separation of the soul of Manchester United Football Club from these vultures is a great thing.
You see, it’s very difficult to strike lucrative deals with super noodle sponsors when you have such a tarnished product! Who will want to be associated with the Glazers and their poisoned trophy and have their own brand or name aligned with it?? Nobody, and that is the point here.
So we will continue to protest, disrupt and fight until we give back the heart and soul of this football club to where it belongs, to the people of Stretford, Urmston, Old Trafford, Salford, Chorlton, Whalley Range……
The revolution is coming.
Rich, Manchester
I see calls for a points deduction? Pah! We should be forced to play the rest of our games behind closed doors and see how we like that! Joking aside, no right-minded person would condone the violence (no police should be hurt, they have enough to put up with) or breaking and entering (pay for the tour lads, it’s well worth it) but I definitely condone the protesting en masse.
Effectively, the Glazers haven’t pumped a penny (dime?) of their own money into the club but have leeched millions out. If the ESL was the straw that broke the camel’s back then good, let it lie there. “They have spent money though” some naysayers will scoff – true, they have spent money because they obviously know the club needs to be relatively successful to maintain sponsorships etc. But the club has had no proper footballing direction, wasting a lot of that money buying the wrong players for the wrong reasons. Recently this has improved but for years it’s been obvious that the football comes a distant second to the dollar for them, as they shortsightedly neglected the youth set up (only recently turned around), the stadium and ultimately the fans. Had we not been saddled with that debt we could have been well ahead of any club in the world, on the field and off it.
The problem is whoever comes in may be just as bad and in other ways, so it’s catch 22; this is football in the 21st century and there’s no rowing back from the capitalist behemoth it has become. However, giving the fans back a bit of power (voting rights and shares for season ticket holders or supporters groups for instance) will help recover some of that lost connection that many are feeling.
One-off protests won’t get us there though, especially not when innocent people are getting hurt. It needs to be sustained and organised with an end goal beyond “we want glazers out”. What’s our long-term workable solution for whichever billionaire owns us? At the moment there is a vacuum into which the likes of MUST (supporters trust) should step to organise, mobilise and give proper direction. The fans on the street don’t know what the plan is and feel completely disenfranchised. Get a manifesto out with a strategy to channel the anger and get us all pulling in the same direction, then let’s work with the club to implement an organisational model that is acceptable for fans and owners. It’s now or never, put up or shut up. Otherwise it’s all just pissing into the wind.
Garey Vance, MUFC
The reason the United fans protested was not because we’re not winning leagues anymore, we protested when they first took over and for years after, but that got completely overlooked and ignored which is why its boiled over into something that like it or not, has made the entire media and hopefully Glazers sit up and take notice.
The reason for the protest is multiple. Firstly the ESL, not only was it a disgusting insult to the whole concept of football it was lead by the Glazers. The apology was nothing far short of an insult and the general transparency from the owners to the supporters (customers) has been non existent. Even when it was blindingly obvious it was doomed it took Chelsea and City to drop out first.
Secondly, Man United is the biggest English club in the world so it should be acting like that – regardless of how much money has been invested we should be best in class with the money thats pumped into that club by sponsors and fans around the world. Saying we spent money on Maguire, Fernandes, pogba etc. Well yes, we always have been able to pay more than the rest. Robson, Pallister, Keane, Rooney, Ferdinand. We can do that because of our fanbase and always have done, thats not the brilliance of the Glazers. But behind the scenes we’ve fallen well behind a number of English teams – the Stadium is becoming a shambles, well behind Spurs, City, Arsenal. The training facilities should be best in class but again we’ve fallen behind. But we should also be best in class in communication with the fans, the way we treat the fans and English football in general. For the first time in 8yrs we have a team that supporters LIKE, we’re almost challenging again and we should be proud of that, proud of what Rashford has done, proud of the influx of youth players coming through, proud of the former United players in the coaching set up. Instead we’re continually embarrassed by our owners who dont understand the club, the fans, english football and have made absolutely no effort to do so in 15yrs. THATS why the protest happened.
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