Have you heard the one about the Manchester United supporter with an inferiority complex? He thought he was just the same as every one else. But this year — so kind of them, we appreciate the honour they are doing us, we really do — Manchester United have been good enough to enter the FA Cup, and yesterday, they went slumming against Fulham, and naturally, they were the pick of the round and made a nice bit of lunchtime telly.
I suppose I ought to apologise for that first paragraph; it was, after all, jam-packed with cheap shots. But what the hell.
Manchester United supporters — that unexclusive group from Oslo, Penryn, Mayfair etc — can see it as a small gift to Sir Alex Ferguson for his indefatigable everybody-hates-us campaign. But really, Manchester United’s decision to give the Cup a miss last season was one of the great PR disasters of all time. It bought vast discredit to the club, and to the Football Association that encouraged it.
The club copped the lion’s share, as was only right. It wasn’t that it made people hate Manchester United; half the people who follow football do that already. The problem was that it gave the anti-Red legions a legitimate reason for their hatred. It allowed the pathetic “stand up if you hate Man U” mentality assume the dignity of a national crusade.
Manchester United were, it seemed, Against The Traditions Of Our Great Game. The decision made them seem like a club that was catering exclusively to the prawn sandwich-eating classes. True, this just happens to be the plain truth of the matter. The problem was that the decision made it obvious. And it is not good business to appear to lose touch with the notional and more or less extinct pie-and-Bovril classes.
Ordinary football-watching people like a sense of tradition and continuity with their prawns. So the return to the competition was a chance to rebuild a lot of fences. It was a match that made Fulham the best-supported club in England (with the possible exception of their opponents) for an entire afternoon. It was also their chance to show us all what good telly they are capable of creating.
Fulham are first-division champions-elect, strutting rather than scrapping their way towards the top flight and on their performance yesterday, in terms of style, self-belief, fearlessness and stomach for the fight, they are streets above most of the Premiership opponents we have watched Manchester United take on this season.
Mohamed Al Fayed, the club’s owner, prophesied — hoped is far too weak a word — that Fulham would soon become the Manchester United of the South, which is a fine ambition, were it not for the fact that the Manchester United of the South is already Manchester United.
But you see what he means. And Fulham gave the most stylish performance of underdoggery I have seen for ages, out-running, out-passing, out-creating and out-hustling the runaway Premiership leaders for most of the first half.
They put on a majestic display, despite breaking just about all the essential rules an underdog must demonstrate. These include (1) not conceding an early goal. Manchester United were a goal up within seven minutes; and (2) that you must score when you are on top of the game — Fulham dominated the first half and pulled a goal back, but missed a series of chances to score the additional goal they needed.
They also missed out on (3) the goalkeeper having a game of Tomaszewski-like blessedness and (4) scoring a late goal from a goalmouth scramble. The breaking of these rules eventually lost them the match but that wasn’t such a bad thing either: so far as Fulham are concerned, a glorious defeat and then promotion to the Premiership is the best combination of ruthless pragmatism and good PR.
It gave Sky the best match of the third round of a Cup competition that has become filled with unexpected interest since the Premiership was done and dusted for the season. It helped that the third round returned to its traditional spot in the first Saturday in January, a move that reaffirmed the general feeling that football is as it should be, that a balance has been struck between prawns and Bovril.
It was good to see the Fulham team, who will bring an added zing to the Premiership next season. I haven’t seen much of them and it would have been nice if Martin Tyler had troubled to name the player on the ball — but his increasingly irritating discursive commentaries scorn the cliché-ridden approach of giving the viewer relevant information.
But Fulham and Sky combined to give us a great football match, settled in the end by matter-of-fact brilliance from Solskjaer and Sheringham. Sheringham said afterwards that he hoped also to score at Wembley. I’m inclined to predict that he won’t, though I wouldn’t back against him scoring in Cardiff.
Source the times by Simon Barnes