Stretford born, now across the canal in Cadishead. Instagram: stretfordbecks
Stretford, Manchester.
Joined February 2009
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Nervous about today again. Leeds will be more up for it than us, we’re on a horrible run of form and half the first XI is out injured.
It's time for team news! ⏰
🔴 Here's your United starting XI...
🤳 @Snapdragon
ALT United's starting XI, featuring Senne Lammens in our green goalkeeper kit.
You knew it was just a matter of time before the PR machine kicked in to try and make him out to be the villain of the piece. The thing is, he’s 100% right and the fans appreciate a player finally saying what we are all thinking.
Our owners are shit and have been for decades.
🚨 BREAKING: Lisandro Martinez’s future at Manchester United has been called into question with ‘real doubts about whether the Argentine defender's contract will be extended when it expires in the summer’, per @RobDorsettSky.
He adds that Martinez has been keen on a move away from Old Trafford for some time and pushed for a move to Atletico Madrid in the summer.
#MUFC
Yes Licha!
🚨🚨🎥 MAJOR BREAKING: Lisandro Martínez CALLS OUT the Manchester United board! #MUFC [@primevideosport]
United are in the CL tonight and I’m just not bothered. FWIW, I think we’ll struggle and be lucky to get a point.
I’m just numb to high level football right now. This city stuff and the reaction to it has tipped me over. Some hateful stuff.
And people supporting cheating too.
Andy Crane retweeted
Absolutely bang on from Keane.
How good City’s team is, or how good the individuals are, is a total irrelevance. It was all built on lies. None of it exists without them breaking the rules. Literally every single game they’ve won since 2009 is pointless.
Today is just awful for football. The club, those fans at Anfield. They’re making a mockery of the game. They’re effectively saying that cheating is okay because it brought them some great memories.
I think they’re right, they’ll send city down to League 2 and they’ll still win their first Premier League title before we win another one 😂
Andy Crane retweeted
Great idea. Would certainly help keep the football world talking about our disgraceful owners. The more attention the better.
Go on Banana, get it sorted.
The more you strip this #ManCity case back, the more extraordinary it becomes.
We are effectively being asked to accept that hundreds of millions of pounds were allegedly moved through a vast disguised-funding scheme, while the Commission reportedly found no direct evidence that a key individual - widely rumoured to be Sheikh Mansour - knew of or authorised it.
City’s position is even more fundamental: the money was not owner funding in the first place.
Then allegations this serious - allegations which, in substance, resemble deliberate corporate deception - are being determined inside a Premier League disciplinary process on the civil balance of probabilities...can you imagine any allegation against you being tried on the ‘balance of probabilities’?
If people genuinely believe City committed fraud, then test that allegation in a criminal court under a criminal standard of proof. Don’t casually use the language of fraud while pretending a private football process is the same thing.
Meanwhile, the same ownership has poured enormous investment into Manchester - jobs, housing, infrastructure and regeneration. Even if you believe City committed these allegations, the over reporting of sponsorship money would have invested extra millions into the UK economy.
And there is another part of this that too many people refuse to confront: the racialised hostility around City’s ownership.
You do not have to call every critic racist to recognise how often “Arab money”, “oil state”, foreignness and cultural suspicion are used as shorthand to delegitimise the club and its owners.
Criticise the evidence. Criticise the governance. Criticise the decisions.
But don’t pretend the tone around #ManCity has always been neutral.
Not looking forward to United playing at all this weekend. That injury list is just so obvious and is going to cost us. Even though Spurs are worse than us.
8 - The eight fastest managers to 100 Premier League wins:
Pep Guardiola - 134 games*
José Mourinho - 142
Jürgen Klopp - 159
Alex Ferguson - 162
Mikel Arteta - 169
Arsène Wenger - 179
Rafael Benítez - 181
Claudio Ranieri - 187
7 Masterminds and 1 backed by financial doping.
My favourite line in here is that the TRA paid £114 for it to be made 😂
The Stretford End will welcome back the famous ‘ticker’ flag tomorrow.
It has been updated by The Red Army.
For @TheAthleticFC
nytimes.com/athletic/7674131…
Andy Crane retweeted
Weird way to describe fraud.
I watched the F1 film with Brad Pitt the other day, and there’s a moment where his character asks to add something to the car that isn’t really in the rules. The FIA punishes it, but the team can still race with the earlier car. It made me think.
In F1, the best teams live at the edge of the regulations. Sometimes the FIA allows what they’ve found, and sometimes it says that goes too far. Occasionally the rules are rewritten afterwards.
Now, City. I’m not defending them. A commission found they entered into sham agreements and broke the spending limits. A sham is an arrangement that isn’t what it claims to be, so that’s a different thing from using a gap nobody had spotted.
City deny it and will appeal. But I find it useful to ask/reflect on how people inside the club see it.
From their point of view, PERHAPS they believe they were doing what elite competitors do: looking at the rules, finding the limits, challenging interpretations and moving faster than the regulatory system.
From the outside, you might look at that and say, “That’s cheating.” From inside the organisation, they might say, “We found something nobody had thought of.”
If you believe you’ve found a way to bring money in, more or less within the rules (and the commission said it was not in the rules and it was cheating), you might tell yourself you’re just being a sharp competitor.
We are all asking “did City cheat?”. But I find this question interesting too: “how did City come to believe they weren’t?”
And understanding a mindset, or trying to, isn’t excusing it.
Andy Crane retweeted
The lad unintentionally explained the exact mechanism of how sportswashing works😀
The core strategy of sportswashing isn't to buy a club and run it poorly or purely for ego. The strategy is for a state linked actor to use vast wealth to do a boss job of running a club and uplifting the surrounding community. By supporting thousands of jobs, building world class venues, and delivering relentless sporting success, the ownership successfully purchases the fierce, unshakeable loyalty of the fanbase and the local government.
Once that deep goodwill is established, it acts as a powerful geopolitical shield. When international observers criticise the UAE's human rights record, or when the Premier League investigates the club's financial practices, the ownership barely needs to defend itself. An entire army of fans and local stakeholders will step up to defend them, because their daily lives have genuinely been improved by the state's money. The "washing" is successful precisely because the local investment is so undeniably good.
Andy Crane retweeted
One of the greatest players I've ever had the privilege to see.
In a day and age where prices are bandied around like confetti I honestly don't think you could put a price on what his capabilities were.
Now, you get one type of midfielder who sits on one position, passes it 10 yards max and it worth £100m.
Then you get another type of midfielder who adds average attacking thrust. Another £100m
Then, you have captains who don't open their fucking mouths for 90 minutes, called" leaders ". Another £100m
He was a team's best defender, best holding midfielder, best leader, best attacking midfielder and most important match winner.
Priceless. Truly priceless.
He’d probably still get in the side now.
Happy 4️⃣5️⃣th birthday to former #MUFC striker Zlatan Ibrahimović! 🥳🇸🇪
Throwback to when Zlatan produced THIS and had Sir Alex Ferguson reacting like the rest of us 😆👏