From Mario Balotelli to Nando's: our 2010-11 end of season awards

 Source: Edited from Telegraph

 Terry Butcher Award for bravery in the line of fire

 Paul Melvin, head of communications of ESPN. After FC United's last-minute win against Rochdale in the FA Cup, fans stormed the pitch and besieged ESPN's makeshift touchline studio - in which the famous trophy itself happened to be on display. Selflessly protecting the cup with his life, Melvin held off hundreds of whooping Mancunians until security could regain control of the situation.

Loan advisor scores winner as FC United beat Barrow to claim an FA Cup first round place

 Source: Telegraph

 Funny, isn’t it, how Wayne Rooney’s concerns about the ambition and long-term stability of Manchester United evaporated as soon as Sir Alex Ferguson agreed to double his salary?

By Simon Briggs
Published: 7:30AM BST 25 Oct 2010

But there are plenty more people in the city who remain unconvinced. Some 2,000 of them turn out regularly to watch FC United of Manchester, the club formed five years ago as a symbol of discontent over the Glazers’ takeover.

Perhaps there is an element of nose-cutting and face-spiting to FC United’s supporters, who have swapped the artistry of Ryan Giggs and Dimitar Berbatov for the rather earthier charms of Jerome Wright — an office administrator from Wythenshawe — and Mike Norton, last year’s top scorer in the Evo-Stick League One Division North.

But there is also something heart-warming about a group of ordinary fans who are prepared to stand up against the corporate tyranny of Premier League football. As a neutral, you had to root for them on Sunday at Gigg Lane, the ground they hire from Bury FC, as they battled for a place in the first round in the FA Cup proper.

According to manager Karl Marginson, formerly a midfielder for Macclesfield and at least a dozen non-League clubs, this tie against Barrow was the biggest match in the short history of FC United. It was also a match they were expected to lose, on the basis that Barrow play in the Conference, two flights higher up on the ladder of non-league football.

But, from the way the game unfolded, you would never have guessed that the ‘Red Rebels’ had come in as underdogs. Marginson sent them out with instructions to enjoy themselves, and the mood was set as early as the second minute when Wright produced a flashy step-over to release Lee Neville (yes, even these Reds have a Neville at full-back) for a raid down the wing.

Wright, a 24-year-old who had a promising junior career at Oldham, proved to be the star of the show. A left-footed winger, he was on a different plane to the players around him — the Lionel Messi of Gigg Lane. He drew three fine saves from Barrow keeper Shaun Pearson during the match, and put in another shot that was almost turned in by Norton.

On the opposite wing, Carlos Roca, whose exotic name disguises his roots in nearby Withington, was having a quiet match by comparison.

But football can be a contrary beast, and it was Roca who wound up scoring the decisive goal in a 1-0 win. It came in the 77th minute, the result of a scuffed shot from Norton that ricocheted into his path some five yards out. A lucky goal, perhaps, but then no one could dispute that FC United were the better team on the day.

Given that this club were formed as a protest against the debt-laden ownership of Manchester United, it was ironic to discover the nature of Roca’s day job. “I’m a loan sales advisor,” he explained, which means that he helps people to service their own personal debt crises.

“I’ll be back in the office tomorrow, and I doubt anyone will have a clue what I did this weekend.”

Still, his goal will no doubt win him hero status among FC United’s fans, who were magnificently noisy throughout.

“You just don’t see scenes like that at this level,” said Marginson. “Now we’ve got Rochdale in the next round, which should make us a few quid to help us build our own ground.”

And there’s another irony. As FC United struggle to pay the rent at Gigg Lane, the club that rejected the evils of market forces now find themselves back at the mercy of economics all over again. Only without so many zeros at the end.

Wayne Rooney's potential purchasers appear in no hurry to start the bidding for unsettled striker

 Source: Telegraph

 Published: 7:00AM BST 21 Oct 2010

 As the Europe's elite digest the news that Wayne Rooney is on his way out of Manchester United, we look at the reaction of some of the clubs likely to buy him - and one that isn't..


Under the hammer: There is likely to be a lot of interest in signing Wayne Rooney, though perhaps not from FC United's end of the football pyramid.

Manchester City

Manchester City manager Roberto Mancini said he is not expecting to do any business in the January transfer window after denying there had been any contact with unsettled Manchester United striker Wayne Rooney.

Asked if there had been contact between City and the player, Mancini said: “No. Never. Rooney is a great player but I think he’ll stay at United. He’s an important player for United.”

However the Italian coach has indicated that he could make changes in the summer.

“There are a lot of players in the world, and what is important for us is to think of our players and our season,” added Mancini.

“In the summer if there is a player who could change something for us, we could talk about this. Not January, I don’t think.

“Manchester City are developing every month, every year. But every day we hear we are buying a new player and that is not good.

“It is correct that the owners have big ambitions, but everyone who works here has big ambitions for the future. At this moment we must think about [Europa League opponents] Poznan and the next league game against Arsenal.”

FC United

While the Reds and the Blues do battle over Wayne Rooney’s signature, the Rebels — better known as FC United of Manchester — declined to put in a bid yesterday.

“Forget his wages,” said Karl Marginson, the manager of the non-League side formed as a protest in the wake of the Glazers’ takeover at Old Trafford. “We couldn’t pay his hairdressing bills. And he doesn’t even have much hair.”

“The idea behind this club was to get away from top-level football, where the money men have taken over. Look at the sale of Cristiano Ronaldo: there was talk of having £80 million to spend, but it was never going to happen.

“When you look at these players earning £200,000 a week, and the way they behave — well, they have nothing in common with the man on the street.”

While Rooney seeks a new contract that would bring him nearly £1 million per month, FC United are trying to raise the £3.5 million they need to build a new stadium and free them from their groundshare arrangement with Bury.

Chelsea

John Terry admitted that he would relish the opportunity to play with Wayne Rooney at Stamford Bridge. The pair are England team-mates and Terry would enjoy extending that relationship to club level.

Carlo Ancelotti, the Chelsea manager, has already said he would join the hunt if the striker is officially made available and while the Old Trafford club would be reluctant to sell to their biggest rivals over recent seasons, the prospect of Rooney travelling to London is one that tantalises at Stamford Bridge.

When asked if he would like Rooney to wear the blue of Chelsea, Terry got a nudge from a club official. Clearly, this has become a sensitive topic at Chelsea, whose owner, Roman Abramovich, would enjoy the prospect of stealing his rival’s most coveted asset.

“Wayne is the best young player in the world,” Terry said. “I am no different to any other player in saying that. You obviously have to respect Manchester United and Wayne, but who knows what’s going to happen?

“We’ve got a great squad of players and he would add to that and strengthen the squad. He is the best player in the world for me.”

Real Madrid

José Mourinho admits he would be interested in bringing Wayne Rooney to La Liga – provided it has the blessing of his long-term friend Sir Alex Ferguson.

Real Madrid are one of the few clubs with the financial muscle to attract the United striker and while Mourinho still believes Rooney will stay at Old Trafford, the former Chelsea coach would clearly be prepared to listen if the chance to sign the player arose.

“He probably wants to leave for some reason but I believe he belongs to Man United, he belongs to Man United fans, he belongs to Old Trafford,” Mourinho said. “But if at the end of the day Man United decide that he is to leave, then give me a call.”

Mourinho admitted he would not be alone in a bidding war if Rooney was put on the market.

“Everybody will be interested,” he said. “But I like him, I like Sir Alex, I like Man United and I believe the best thing for him is to stay there for life. Would I like to reunite him with Cristiano Ronaldo? Of course I would, but I am certain he will stay at Old Trafford.”

From Telegraph

Edited from: Telegraph (Sport, page 4. 26th March 2010. No online content)

...
FC United, the club formed by disaffected Manchester United supporters following the takeover of the club by the Glazer family in 2005, are planning to build a new stadium in Newton Heath — the original base of the Old Trafford club.

Talks are under way to secure £3.5million funding for a 5,000-seat stadium that would enable FC United to vacate their current base, Gigg Lane, the home of League Two club Bury.

FC United general manager Andy Walsh said: “The significance of this location is historical while it will also showcase a new model of facility development, based on supporter ownership and community involvement.”

Manchester United supporters still hold club’s heart and soul dear not their bottom line

Source: Telegraph

As he sits in the middle of the team photograph taken to mark the opening of his new football stadium in Old Trafford in 1910, John Henry Davies looks the archetype of Edwardian success.

By Jim White
Published: 7:00AM GMT 19 Feb 2010

With his several chins, his handsome, waxed moustache and his box-fresh bowler hat, as he stares into the camera lens, the Manchester United chairman exudes an air of self-satisfied certainty. This is the picture of a man well aware that he has something substantial on his hands.

The brewing magnate had taken control of Newton Heath football club nine years previously, rescuing a near bankrupt institution that had only been kept alive by the players rattling collecting boxes in local pubs.

Not a football fan, Davies was nonetheless fiercely proud of the town that had made him rich and he saw in the team the perfect promotional tool for Mancunian self-esteem.

The first thing he did was change the club’s parochial name to reflect its wider geographical base: Manchester United, he reckoned was the perfect moniker to advance his vision.

He paid off debts and sorted out the place so quickly he was soon turning a handsome profit from the club. Then, with their Bank Street premises at any moment threatening to sink into the mud and grime, he decided to provide them with a new home.

Old Trafford was built without debt or mortgage, largely from Davies’s own pocket (or rather from his wife’s purse; she was heiress to the Tate and Lyle fortune).

With typical bravura, on completion Davies decreed the ground to be the best in England, and thus he casually assumed, the best in the world. Which was only right, he said. What was required was a home worthy for his team, a team of “Manchester men to make Manchester proud”.

A century on, if you stand in front of the boastful steel and glass frontage of the modern Old Trafford, you will find yourself shoulder to shoulder with tourists from Singapore, Cyprus, Sydney and beyond photographing its signage and statuary. In every snap they are confirming Davies’s concept: United is the entity that has put Manchester on the world map. Millions across the world know of Manchester not because of cotton or coal or Coronation Street but because of the city’s most prominent cultural asset: United.

Much to the chagrin of United’s noisy neighbours, the club are more generally known in Barcelona, Madrid and Milan simply as “Manchester”. These days people associate Cottonopolis with the exploits of Law, Best and Charlton; Giggs, Keane and Cantona and, latterly the new golden trinity of Old Trafford: Rooney, Rooney and Rooney. They may not be Manchester men, but theirs is indeed the team that made Manchester proud.

So much so that in 2005, the club’s worldwide renown, built up through the unbeatable combination of historical romance and recent success, even seeped into the consciousness of a family of businessmen based in Florida, that last redoubt of football agnosticism. Unmoved by the sporting claims of the club, indifferent to the silverware cluttering the trophy room, unaware of the tragic implications in the word Munich, what the Glazer family saw in United was expressed in more modern business terms: it was all about the power of the brand.

And what a brand it is, reckoned to be among the five most instantly recognisable in the sporting world, up there with Nike, adidas, the Olympic rings and the New York Yankees. Such recognition is immensely valuable.

For 20 years following the moment Alex Ferguson arrived at the club bringing with him untrammelled success, the United brand was ruthlessly exploited by those in control. It was United who were at the forefront of the formation of the Premier League, pioneered corporate hospitality, and first entered the new football merchandise business. For the new United football’s traditional boundaries of local affiliation held no restraint.

So it was that for many football followers, particularly fans of less financially muscular clubs, United became synonymous with all that was wrong with the game, the rapacious greed, the careless pursuit of wealth at all costs, the deliberate dislocation of football from its roots. When the words 'football’ and 'club’ were removed from the badge in 1998 it was final proof. No longer a football club, United had become something different: a corporation.

The Glazers’ interest in United was the ultimate recognition of the club’s transformation. An operation formed by a railway carriage maker to give its workers a healthy alternative to spending their leisure hours marinated in alcohol had become, 130 years later, an entertainment conglomerate, a company that provides media content, like Universal Studios.

For the Glazers, there was no emotional implications here, no Davies-like desire to put their mark on the world. In their mind, seeking to take control of United was solely about seizing the asset; it was getting their hands on a production line spewing cash. Their takeover was the final statement that the club’s wider cultural meaning had been subsumed into its bottom line.

Yet, to stand on the bridge over the railway behind the Stretford End, as the crowd make their way to the ground on match days is to get a sense of an institution much closer to Davies’s vision than that of the Glazers. Despite the sneery insistence of rivals that the United crowd is made up of those solely from beyond the city boundary, Mancunians are not uniquely immune to the finest players in history besporting themselves on their doorstep. Yes, there are millions across the globe who claim allegiance to the club who would be incapable of pinpointing the city on the map, but the accents gathering to watch home games are overwhelmingly north-western, overwhelmingly working class. Somehow, despite flotations and leveraged buyouts, despite payment in kind notes and bond issues, despite the insistent spread of corporatisation evident in every concession stand dotted round the ground, there is something in the club that still reaches out to them. And the arrival of the Glazers has made many of them think deeply about what exactly that something is.

Once, in the Fifties, the manager Matt Busby, as strong a definer of the meaning of United as anyone associated with its tale, took his United players to the gates of a factory next door to the ground after training. It was clocking off time and he instructed them to watch the Lowry-like stick figures trudging home. He wanted to remind them of what he saw as their duty. They had an obligation, he said, to play a brand of football that lifted the spirits of the people who paid their wages.

The Glazers take a different view. For them the fans clacking through the turnstiles (or rather swiping their credit-card-style season tickets through state-of-the-art admissions systems) are mere customers. The family made it clear what they felt about them in the small print of the recent bond issue, designed to alleviate temporarily the debt they had incurred taking over the club. Ticket prices, it was noted, could rise inexorably: the customers would always fork out whatever it took to see their heroes. That was the nature of football support.

Such an attitude will come as no surprise to the couple of thousand diehard fans who broke away from the club in 2005 to form a co-operative venture of their own called FC United of Manchester. Battered by commerce, wearied by the endless diminution of the club’s cultural status, the final straw for the refuseniks was the manner in which the Glazers leveraged their buy-out by saddling the club with the mortgage to facilitate it. Not for sale, they cried as they refused to renew their season tickets.

“What is it you love about United? It’s not the board, or the moneymaking or the whole media Man U thing, that’s not the soul of the club,” says Andy Walsh, one of the founders of FC United. “What you defended was your experience of going to United with your friends and family. It was the sense of belonging, of being part of the Manchester United movement. And we discovered we could take that with us.” Others viewed the departing few as traitors. “I’ve never seen Manchester United as mine,” says Stephen Armstrong, a lifetime fan from Moston. “I belong to United, but I don’t own it. I see my relationship as that of a dog to its owner: I give it my loyalty and it keeps me warm in return.”

But recent revelations about the crippling levels of debt put on the club by the Glazers, debt that will be paid off by the fealty of such fans, has led to a new search among the supporters to define the true meaning of the club. What is it they follow? How can they continue to put their trust, their money, their identity into a concept now so tarnished? The Love United Hate Glazer movement has found visual articulation through fans sporting the original colours of Newton Heath. Green and yellow scarves are now in the majority in the stadium.

Suddenly fans are finding fresh enthusiasm for what it is they most cherish about United: the sense of shared identity between them, their fellow supporters and the players on the pitch. Suddenly the previously moribund atmosphere at Davies’s ground has perked up. Suddenly there is a sense of excitement in the air.

Unusually in football, this discourse has taken place against the background of success. Those green and yellow scarves are flying in celebration of a Ferguson team again reaching fruition at the business end of the season.

Yet their very popularity is evidence that for many of those inside Davies’s venerable old ground, their club is about more than trophies, that it has a meaning beyond mere commerce, that it has a soul. A hundred years on, John Henry Davies would be proud.

Provided, obviously, he was still earning a tidy dividend from his investment.

Manchester United still rule the roost despite Manchester City’s lottery win

Edited from: Telegraph

...

It is 2005 all over again. United's answer to the Roman revolution at Chelsea was to fall into the indebted hands of Malcolm Glazer.

The club convulsed. Disturbed supporters marched out of the Stretford End behind their FC United of Manchester banners to begin life anew in a Gigg Lane commune.

They wanted none of the Americanised commercialisation of Old Trafford, though they seemed happy enough when the money being spun was in the hands of a dynasty of Mancunian master butchers.

The departing faction confused love with ownership. They saw the club's accounts as their own. The debts would bring them down, they screamed as if they were the ones making the repayments. Ferguson was already on the wrong end of a pendulum that had swung towards Arsène Wenger's Invincibles. Then, after a season of overbearing Arsenal supremacy, along rides a Portuguese show pony with a saddle full of roubles.
...

Sugar-daddy or supporters - who do you want to run your club?

Source: Telegraph

By Paul Kelso July 23rd, 2009
Paul Kelso is the Telegraph's Chief Sports Reporter.

Who would you prefer to own your football club? A well-meaning group of supporters committed to ensuring that the club survives in perpetuity, or an anonymous investor with deep pockets ready to pump money into the club in return for a profit, but offering no guarantee as to their long-term intentions?
At Meadow Lane, the new home of Sven Goran Eriksson and venue for the most remarkable story of the close season, supporters who battled to save their club from the wreckage of a previous glitzy buy-out have just chosen the latter.
Their decision is, at face value a blow for the supporters’ trust model, a system of ownership that many believe offers clubs, particularly those in the lower leagues, an alternative to boom-and-bust and the reliance on sugar-daddies and investors whose motives are not always transparent.
Until last week Notts County was owned and run by a trust. It took control of the club in 2003, rescuing it with the help of a local benefactor from an 18-month period in administration that threatened its existence.
As is usually the case with supporter-led takeovers it was a long and gruelling battle, led by highly committed individuals who were successful only because of the support of fans locally and around the country, many of who dipped into their own pockets to save the club.
The trust inherited a mess of unpaid debts and unhappy creditors, most of the dating from a previous takeover led by American journalist Albert Scardino, husband of Dame Marjorie, chief executive of the Pearson Group that owns the Financial Times, whose brief sally into English football was well-meaning but ultimately unsuccessful.
As is often the case the supporters were the last people standing, and set about rescuing what they could from the wreckage. Adopting the trust model, a system of mutual ownership intended to give supporters a democratic voice in the running of their club, they tried to make the most of a bitter inheritance.
It has not been an easy road, with the strain of running a club burdened by debt eventually causing divisions between trust members and a public falling out between factions within the club. In this climate the arrival of Munto Finance, whoever they may be, waving a bank guarantee, was too good to resist and an overwhelming majority of trust members voted to accept their offer.

In a remarkable show of faith the trust handed over its 61% stake in the club for nothing, as well as writing off a £170,000 loan, the product of a thousand collection buckets and fundraisers.

On the face of it the decision to choose anonymous financiers over collective ownership is a blow for the trust model. Dave Boyle, chief executive of Supporters Direct, the body that promotes mutual ownership of clubs, says the underlying reasons are football’s crash-and-burn economics.
“The difficulty we have with most of the clubs that have become fully trust-owned is that many of them are picking up the pieces after a disaster,” he says. “Those that have started from scratch like AFC Wimbledon and FC United are doing brilliantly, but others like Chesterfield, York City, Exeter City and Notts County have inherited a basket case and that is tough.
“Exeter City were lucky, they drew Manchester United in the FA Cup and that gave them a windfall that cleared the debts and gave them a fresh start. Others have not been so fortunate, and the reality is that trusts often have to spend the majority of their time dealing with the mistakes of previous regimes. That can take its toll, so it is not a surprise that when individuals come along offering a way out they are tempted, but investors are generally not charitable.”
Critics of the trust model will cite Notts County as evidence that collective ownership can never compete with clubs run by executives working in a more traditional business structure. Boyle counters that the two are not mutually exclusive.
“We have always said our favoured model is Trust-owned, professionally run. Supporters should own the club and then find the best executives they can afford to run it. That remains the ideal for us. It offers clubs sanity and stability at a time when there is unease about the way money is affecting the game.”
At Meadow Lane they are about to discover first-hand which model works best.

Manchester's FC United 'do a Radiohead' over ticket prices

Source: Telegraph

Unibond League side FC United have come up with a novel way of ensuring they do not lose fans during the current recession - by getting them to name their own season ticket price.

By Richard Bright
Last Updated: 11:58AM BST 13 May 2009

The club, launched in 2005 as a protest at Malcolm Glazer's takeover of Manchester United, missed out on the play-offs to reach Conference North this season, the first time they have not been promoted.

Yet they still remain committed to the principle of a supporters' trust, the basis on which they were founded and, taking the idea of Radiohead, who got fans to name their own price to download their music off the internet, the club have come up with a novel scheme of their own, named 'Your season ticket, your choice'.

And, while some people might look upon the latest move as slightly bizarre, particularly as the cash still needs to be found for the present ground-sharing agreement with Bury, FC United officials are confident fans with extra cash will make up the shortfall.

FC United board member Jules Spencer said: "We hope the 'Your season ticket, your choice' campaign will do two things. First, it will offer a lower season ticket price for those who cannot afford last year's price.

"Secondly, it means those supporters who can afford a bit more can choose to donate as much as they wish."

FC United recently revealed that they hope to move into their own ground within the next two years.

The club signed an extension with Bury over their ground-share contract which runs out in 2011. FC United averaged 2,152 this season.

Eric Cantona fears for Manchester United’s future after Sir Alex Ferguson

Observing United’s unconvincing start to the defence of both their Premier League and Champions League titles, the Frenchman has expressed concern over the destabilising effect of United eventually losing the most successful manager in their history.

The unpopular arrival of the Glazer family saddled the club with around £600 million of debt and has seen United’s ticket prices, previously some of the most competitively priced in the Premier League, rise year-on-year.

Though the Americans’ involvement has allowed Ferguson to build another championship winning squad, Cantona believes that it is only the Scotsman’s experienced hand that is keeping United challenging in domestic and European competition.

“I can understand why the fans are concerned,” said the former United player.

“The philosophy of the club will never change while Alex Ferguson is at the club. After he leaves . . . that’s what makes me worry.

“Ferguson is so strong, so popular, he can control everything. For the moment nothing has changed there — apart from in an economic way.

“I’m worried about the future. I hope that things will not change.”

Cantona also pledged his support for FC United, the club founded by disaffected supporters who bitterly fought against the Glazer takeover.

“They have a great idea,” said Cantona. “I hope they will become a great club and win the European Cup in 50 years’ time.

“Every club has to be created at one point. Now I am interested in the people who create clubs. Which type of people created Manchester United or Manchester City?”

FC United to rekindle history after FA Cup win

Source: Telegraph.co.uk

By Ricky George

It may have been a Manchester Derby with a difference, but for sheer excitement and some spectacular finishing, yesterday's FA Cup Preliminary Round tie between Trafford and FC United of Manchester would have graced Old Trafford itself. The two non-league sides - Trafford play in the Vodkat NW Counties League whilst United have climbed to the Unibond Division One North on level four of the pyramid - produced a thrilling and combative encounter at Altrincham's Moss Lane stadium.

In beating their local rivals 5-2, the breakaway fans' club, playing in their first ever FA Cup match, earned the right to play Fleetwood Town in the First Qualifying Round of the competition.

Over a century ago, the fledgling Newton Heath FC (who became Manchester United in 1902) entered the FA Cup for the first time against the very same opponents. Football does occasionally throw up strange coincidences, this one almost defies belief.

It is only two years since a group of disenchanted Manchester United supporters abandoned their beloved side in protest against the sale of the club to the Glazer family.

On the premise that membership of the new club would attract a minimum of 1000 fans, the organisers, in receipt of four times that figure, moved in to share League Two Bury's Gigg Lane stadium. FC United quickly won successive championships, playing to average crowds of nearly 3000.

They could have been 3-0 up inside the first 10 minutes, but took the lead a minute later following Josh Howard's corner; central defender Rob Nugent thumping home a header from just inside the penalty area.

Howard, a former Manchester United youth player, made it 2-0 from close range shortly after. In front of a huge home attendance of 2,238, Chris Mackay reduced the arrears with a delicate chip as Trafford battled their way back into contention. They deservedly levelled the scores when Andy Lundy forced his way through.

It was fast and furious as FC United went back in front a minute before half-time when Nicky Platt converted a penalty following a Trafford handball in the box. The pace dropped in the second half as FC United resumed control, Simon Carden restoring their two-goal advantage with 21 minutes left.

Fittingly, in the final minute, a player named Hargreaves (Anthony) topped off the performance with the fifth and final goal, leaving FCUM with just six more rounds to play before entering the draw alongside their Almer Mater.

"It's a FCUM Love thang" read one of many banners around Moss Lane. "Making friends not millionaires", said another.