Caoimhin O’Muraile ⚽ Ever since the aggressive and legally questionable takeover of Manchester United Football Club back in 2005 by Malcom Glazer and his family discontent leading to riots and protests, some ongoing, have been regular occurrences at Old Trafford.
Since his death in 2014 Malcom Glazer’s sons have been taking a higher profile role in the milking of the once great club, the highest profiles being Avram, Joel and Bryan. For years the supporters have demanded the exit of the Glazers and when in 2022 they finally put the club up for sale it looked like their wish had come true. Now in mid-July 2023 eight months and rising into the fiasco it appears no closer to the club being sold. The two front runners, Sheikh Jassim of Qatar, a country with terrible human rights records, who has offered around five billion for the total control of the club and Jim Ratcliffe, chairman of the chemical company INEOs group, who has offered to buy a majority of share but still leaving around twenty per cent which the Glazers would retain. Ratcliffe would have the controlling interests but the hated Glazers would still have a small input. This last aspect would not please the supporters.
Let’s face facts: whoever takes over, if anybody does, the club will be solely a profit cow for the new owners as are all Premier League clubs to a greater or lesser extent. So, the confusion and turmoil continues at Old Trafford while manager, Erik Ten Hag, tries to rebuild the team to mount a challenge next season. Given the confusion it is a miracle he has achieved in one season what he has. How much longer he will tolerate working under such conditions of uncertainty is anybody’s guess.
To be fair, football at the highest level, finished as a game in 1992 when the old first division was scrapped and the premier league introduced. At United we were so elated at being the first PL winners 1992/93, after a 26 year wait since we lifted the league in 1967, we missed much of the corruption which over the next few years would creep into the top flight. The icing on the cake came at Old Trafford with the takeover by the Glazers in 2005. This really did highlight the crooked nature of the game at that level. Manchester United have won thirteen PL championships with seven previous first division titles making United the record holders for league titles in England, all fairly as the corruption is behind the scenes at senior management level involving the AGM and corrupt voting. This has nothing to do with the lads and lasses on the field of play.
Today at many PL clubs the manager no longer decides who he will buy and sell: at Old Trafford a Recruiting Board decide. This board missed out on Erling Haaland who could have been bought for as little as four million pounds if this Board and Director of Football had listened to the then manager, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer who also advised to go for Declan Rice as a teenager. Little wonder in 2013 Alex Ferguson saw which way the wind was blowing and said. fuck this, I’m ‘retiring’.
In 2005 a group of United supporters who had had enough of this load of bollocks decided to form their own version of Manchester United Football Club. Football Club United of Manchester was born and entered the North West Counties League Division Two, gaining promotion at the first attempt. We had, and still do have, one of the highest supports in non-league football, higher than some football league clubs, and our travelling support is famed. It is a bit like watching Man United of old minus the violence.
In 2005 a group of United supporters who had had enough of this load of bollocks decided to form their own version of Manchester United Football Club. Football Club United of Manchester was born and entered the North West Counties League Division Two, gaining promotion at the first attempt. We had, and still do have, one of the highest supports in non-league football, higher than some football league clubs, and our travelling support is famed. It is a bit like watching Man United of old minus the violence.
FC United claim the ‘cultural and heart and moral soul’ of Manchester United and the historical inheritance of the old days. We commemorate the Munich tragedy every 6th February much the same as do “Big United” as Man Utd are often referred. FC United were formed along democratic lines of ‘one member one vote’ as the Management Board are elected on a yearly basis by popular vote of the membership. ‘One member one vote’ applies to all members irrespective of personnel wealth or income. The club is run on a ‘not for profit’ basis with all monies getting pumped back into the club. This is football as the game should be played and organised, not the crooked way the Premier League go about things.
The first Board we elected did some sterling work and in 2015 we opened our own ground, Broadhurst Park at Moston, Manchester. The ‘Red Rebels’ as some call us entertained Benfica for the opening of the ground in front of over 4,000 supporters. This was on 29th May 2015, forty-seven years after that historic night at Wembley when Man United ‘defeated Benfica by four goals to one’ in 1968 29th May. FC United were the winners of the inaugural Fenix Trophy in 2022 beating Prague Raptors 2-0 in Rimini. We were the first Manchester club to win a European trophy since Man Utd lifted the UEFA Cup in 2017. The Fenix Trophy is a European competition designed to bring football together across Europe and is for amateurs and semi-professional sides. We were the first to win it. It seems all firsts belong to Manchester United or related teams. We were the first in England to enter the European Cup back in 1956, the first English side to win the same cup in 1968, now the first to lift the Fenix Trophy, one of many we hope.
In the early years, in fact the first decade of our existence, FC United shared Burys’s Gigg Lane ground. On more than one occasion we attracted crowds over six thousand and against Brighton and Hove Albion in an FA Cup second round replay back in 2010, the attendance was almost 7,000. FC United were attracting bigger crowds than our league hosts, Bury. Of course, much of this was the novelty of following a United team with vocal support similar, though much smaller in numbers, to the atmosphere once generated at Old Trafford, sixties, seventies, and eighties before these ridiculous all seater stadia became part of the rich man’s law. Today crowds of around 2,000 are about average, still among the largest in non-league football along with South Shields.
Back in 2005 one-time Manchester United player, Alan Gowling, predicted of FCUM; “they won’t last till Christmas.” Well, Alan, good as you once were, do not get a job a fortune teller. As the song goes around the Christmas period; ‘a very merry Christmas, and a happy new year, we’re FC United and we’re still fucking here’!
In the early years, in fact the first decade of our existence, FC United shared Burys’s Gigg Lane ground. On more than one occasion we attracted crowds over six thousand and against Brighton and Hove Albion in an FA Cup second round replay back in 2010, the attendance was almost 7,000. FC United were attracting bigger crowds than our league hosts, Bury. Of course, much of this was the novelty of following a United team with vocal support similar, though much smaller in numbers, to the atmosphere once generated at Old Trafford, sixties, seventies, and eighties before these ridiculous all seater stadia became part of the rich man’s law. Today crowds of around 2,000 are about average, still among the largest in non-league football along with South Shields.
Back in 2005 one-time Manchester United player, Alan Gowling, predicted of FCUM; “they won’t last till Christmas.” Well, Alan, good as you once were, do not get a job a fortune teller. As the song goes around the Christmas period; ‘a very merry Christmas, and a happy new year, we’re FC United and we’re still fucking here’!
It is in the constitution of FCUM to reject and avoid all out and out commercialism and we have no sponsors on our shirts splashed across the chest. This is written into the constitution and cannot be altered without a vote. We do have sponsorship arrangements with local small business’s which, frankly, I am against such arrangements preferring a more planned economic approach with a voluntary levy of fans on a monthly basis but it appears these days I am a minority. FCUM have strict anti-racist policies and practice gender and ethnic equality. We had a women’s team long before “Big United” and other so-called Premier League clubs. Most of our fans still follow and support, away from home if FC are not playing, Man Utd, particularly my generation who admittedly are getting on in years now.
When Man United played Hull City away in the League Cup many of the travelling support were FCUM supporters. My only fear is that in years to come the cultural and historical ties to Old Trafford are not broken, that may be a bridge too far for me. From the sixties to 2005 I was at Old Trafford and despite everything, as far as the lads on the pitch and the women, are concerned I still want “Big United” to win. Some FCUM fans are also members of MUST (Manchester United Supporters Trust) including me. Never burn all your bridges and over thirty years at Old Trafford, including by childhood and adolescent years cannot be just written out. By the same token the Glazers are not getting a penny and FC United are the way forward.
All paid up members, around 2,500, of FCUM receive regular reports on the activities of the Board and what is going on away from the pitch. There is no reason whatsoever why all football could not be run in such a democratic way, which pisses our detractors right off, as Alex Ferguson, Man Utd's second greatest manager once commented about FC; “a bunch of self-publicists.” I would have thought better of Fergie, one time fire brand who laid the law down according to himself, it would have been thought he’d have encouraged such rebellious anti-establishment activities! How much longer FC can continue with our democratic practices in an increasingly undemocratic world remains to be seen. That will be up to future generations to uphold and defend.
As things stand there is no reason why FC United cannot go from strength to strength though there are many pitfalls facing us. One would be, what if we get good enough, we reach the hated Premier League one day? That could pose a problem because we would be joining everything we walked away from! However, that day is a long way off so let’s enjoy what we have for the time being, after all “tomorrow never comes”. Above is a plaque erected at FC United’s first meeting back in 2005. I haven’t travelled to Manchester for a couple of seasons now, due to mobility problems, and all written here was factual the last time I was in attendance at Broadhurst Park. There is no reason to think things have changed and the principles of the club are the same today as they were then.
All paid up members, around 2,500, of FCUM receive regular reports on the activities of the Board and what is going on away from the pitch. There is no reason whatsoever why all football could not be run in such a democratic way, which pisses our detractors right off, as Alex Ferguson, Man Utd's second greatest manager once commented about FC; “a bunch of self-publicists.” I would have thought better of Fergie, one time fire brand who laid the law down according to himself, it would have been thought he’d have encouraged such rebellious anti-establishment activities! How much longer FC can continue with our democratic practices in an increasingly undemocratic world remains to be seen. That will be up to future generations to uphold and defend.
As things stand there is no reason why FC United cannot go from strength to strength though there are many pitfalls facing us. One would be, what if we get good enough, we reach the hated Premier League one day? That could pose a problem because we would be joining everything we walked away from! However, that day is a long way off so let’s enjoy what we have for the time being, after all “tomorrow never comes”. Above is a plaque erected at FC United’s first meeting back in 2005. I haven’t travelled to Manchester for a couple of seasons now, due to mobility problems, and all written here was factual the last time I was in attendance at Broadhurst Park. There is no reason to think things have changed and the principles of the club are the same today as they were then.
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| Caoimhin O’Muraile is Independent Socialist Republican and Marxist. |
At least the Glazers have been generous with transfer funds . Contrast that with FSG @ Anfield who don't immediately replace players who depart ( Lovren & Gini ) . The Reds could lose half a dozen players this summer & purchase as few as 3 . Midfield should of been revamped last summer & midfield this year . Allowing a team grow old takes as long as 4 years to rectify .
ReplyDeleteOff set this "generous with transfer funds" Ron with the money they have taken out for themselves and to finance their US enterprises, coupled with the debts incurred via hedgefunds and this generousity looks a little less rosy.
ReplyDeleteThe situation down the East Lancs Road is different but for Liverpool fans equally serious. It is for this reason, concern over club ownership, that SoS approached MUST, something once unthinkable, and we issued a joint statement, signed by both to the British Government. I doubt they'll listen but at least we have collectivelly done something. Hopefully this is the begining of joint campaigns.
Caoimhin O'Muraile