Safe standing

Source; edited from FSF's report on safe standing. The report in full is available for download from their site.

5.16 The dissatisfaction of some Manchester United supporters had become so extreme that they formed their own breakaway club called FC United of Manchester (FCUM) in 2005/6. Whilst the formation of FCUM has been controversial (some Manchester United supporters accusing FCUM followers of ‘desertion’) the breakaway is an example of the disaffection and alienation bubbling under the surface at many clubs, particularly the bigger ones. One of the many issues driving the formation of FCUM is the lack of choice to sit or stand at Old Trafford.

5.17 One FSF member who has attended three FCUM games as a neutral said of his visits, ‘I’d encourage every fan in the country to get along to an FC United game if they can. It’s a real eye-opener. Just how an afternoon out at a professional football match should be. I’ve never heard three thousand fans make so much noise. The passion and wit of the FC United supporters is really something very special. The club board, elected by the fans, is working flat out to encourage a new generation of young supporters into the ground. It has worked very hard to ensure that the stewarding of fans is sensitive and appropriate. Tickets only cost £7(€9.94) for adults and £2 (€2.84) for concessions. You won’t find a better value day out anywhere in the country. The whole sense of the ground on match days is one of empowerment, passion and fun.’

5.18 A medium term objective of the FCUM members and board is to develop its own stadium. Commenting on this, FCUM general manager Andy Walsh says, ‘Many of our supporters prefer to stand and this is an issue that the club is keen to pursue. We’d want safe standing areas as part of any new ground we build.’ The anecdotal evidence of FCUM is supported by recent research conducted by Professor Mike Weed of Canterbury Christ Church University. Professor Weed’s research was not directly related to the issue of standing at football stadia. It was connected with the growth of the culture of watching the game live on television in pubs and bars..

It’ll be even tougher for Crewe FC

Source: thisischeshire.co.uk

CREWE FC boss Ian O'Reilly believes the club could face an even tougher battle to win promotion next season.

With big resources in the non-league game, FC United are likely to run a reserve side in Mid Cheshire League Division Two.

The rouge Red Devils have been super successful since their inception due to the Glazier takeover at Old Trafford, winning successive promotions with huge support.
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And it's likely they'll be looking to do similar things with their second string.

"I think they've been voted in and the league will see it as a big boost," explained O'Reilly.

"They'll probably be the team to beat.

"They'll have a lot of players to keep happy and I'm sure some will filter down to the second team."

Bigger clubs already have a proven track record of progress in Division Two.
“We’ll be looking to compete next season and we’ll give it everything we’ve got.”
Crewe FC Ian O'Reilly

Both Curzon Ashton and Stalybridge Celtic saw their reserve sides claim the top two spots and promotion last season.

In fact they finished with identical records, right down to goal difference that forced a play-off for the title.

Stalybridge took it on penalties after a 2-2 draw.

"FC United will be another side with a big first team," added O'Reilly.

"It's more difficult for the likes of us, Whitchurch and Lostock who are the first team.

"They have players up to UniBond League standard.

"You only have to look at last season.

"The two teams with senior sides both went up."

But O'Reilly isn't complaining, relishing the challenge to improve on last season's sole triumph of another Crewe FA Cup.

"I quite like it that way," he continued.

"It means better teams and makes it more competitive.

"That's why you play on a Saturday at this level.

"It's a better standard against better players at good grounds.

"It's all about the challenge.

"Curzon had about seven or eight who had played in their first team when we played them.

"We got a draw there and at Stalybridge but lost both at home.

"We'll be looking to compete next season and we'll give it everything we've got."

Leading scorer Dave Hanson could keep the armband despite approaching veteran status.

"It was his birthday at the weekend," said O'Reilly.

"He'll be getting his bus pass before long but he can still put the ball away."

FC United should be big pull says Yates

Source: worcesternews.co.uk

KIDDERMINSTER Harriers boss Mark Yates believes the intriguing friendly with FC United could be the biggest pull of their pre-season programme.

As well as hosting League One outfits Cheltenham and Walsall, Harriers face the side formed by breakaway fans of Manchester United.

Yates will also send a side to Bewdley Town to help the ambitious West Midlands League club open their new main stand.
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The Kidderminster manager said: "The FC United one is a coup for us really because I think out of all the three teams coming to Aggborough they will bring the most support.

"They're a well-run, well-supported football club and it will be nice to have them here."

Yates is also delighted to welcome his former club, Cheltenham, where he was a midfielder, and this season's League Two champions Walsall.

Pre-season fixtures, Saturday, July 15: Rushall Olympic (a) 3pm; Sunday, July 16: Bewdley (a) 3pm; Saturday, July 21: FC United (h) 3pm; Tuesday, July 24: Cheltenham Town (h) 7.45pm; Saturday, July 28: AFC Telford (a) 3pm; Tuesday, July 31: Walsall (h) 7.45pm; Saturday, August 4: Hinckley United (a) 3pm.

Meanwhile, Harriers are introducing a new away strip, featuring yellow shirts, blue shorts and blue socks, which is likely to debut in the game with FC United. The previous blue and white kit will just be used as back-up.

Yates added: "The home kit will stay the same as it was, except that we'll be wearing white shorts rather than the black."

United we stand

Source: The Guardian (Letters, no online content)

David Conn's article (FC United rise and shine on sense of community, May 9) was the best I have read. It takes a lot to stay away from the club you've loved since you were a child and I hope one day Manchester United will come back to us, but FC United fills the void. Not with the same standard of football (although it is better than I expected), but with a club that is all it should be and more. There is so much more to a club than winning trophies. I always knew that but it took Glazer to remind me. I was brought up believing Mancunians stood up for what is right, however painful, and I am grateful to those who worked so hard to get the club up and running and proud to be a founder member. FC United is raw, passionate, untainted fun. Best of all, it's ours.

Julie Shorney Manchester

Harriers to tackle Man Utd fan team

Source: Worcester News
KIDDERMINSTER Harriers will take on the fans' team of Manchester United in a pre-season friendly ahead of the 2007/08 Blue Square Premier season.

Harriers host FC United, created by supporters of the Red Devils who have achieved promotion to the Northern Premier League Division One, on Saturday, July 21. Mark Yates' men also face Football League opponents at Aggborough in the form of Cheltenham Town and Walsall.

The playing squad report back following their summer break in the first week of July and the first pre-season games will come soon after.

They start with a weekend double-header at Rushall Olympic and Bewdley Town.

Old foes Cheltenham consolidated superbly in League One, finishing in 17th place, while Walsall clinched the League Two championship.

The programme is wrapped up with a trip to Conference North play-off finalists Hinckley United. The Blue Square Premier season kicks-off on Saturday, August 11.

Fixtures, Saturday, July 15: Rushall Olympic (a) 3pm; Sunday, July 16: Bewdley Town (a) 3pm; Saturday, July 21: FC United (h) 3pm; Tuesday, July 24: Cheltenham Town (h) 7.45pm; Saturday, July 28: AFC Telford (a) 3pm; Tuesday, July 31: Walsall (h) 7.45pm; Saturday, August 4: Hinckley United (a) 3pm.

Rhodri Giggs in brawl quiz

Source: M.E.N.

Seb Ramsay
22/ 5/2007

THE brother of football star Ryan Giggs was arrested after a fight broke out at a charity event organised by the Manchester United player.

Rhodri Giggs was quizzed by police and released on bail after the fracas at the De Vere Belfry Hotel, near Birmingham.

A 33-year-old Londoner suffered injuries to his nose in the brawl but didn't need to go to hospital.

Police were called in the early hours of yesterday and Rhodri, 30, who plays for breakaway club FC United, was arrested.

The black-tie fundraiser raised nearly £200,000 for the £1m Five Stars scanner appeal for the New Manchester Children's Hospital and was organised by Ryan and Hotel Babylon actor Max Beesley.

Stars at the £200-a-head black-tie dinner included Wayne Rooney and Coleen McLoughlin.

They were not involved in the alleged incident.

Red Issue

Source: The Observer Letters (no online content)

So Schalke ('145,000 see "German Newcastle" blow it', last week) are a club who have fans' interests at their heart, work closely with the community, price their tickets at an affordable level, refuse to pay the exorbitant amounts demanded by today's footballers and they still manage to compete at the top level in one of Europe's best leagues. Your piece followed nicely from the article the week before on how the greed and short-sightedness of the money-grabbing Premiership elite is damaging English football. Both should be photocopied and sent to every Glazer, Abramovich, Gillett, Lerner and Kroenke.

So what should fans do if they're fed up with clubs bleeding supporters dry? As Schalke's club secretary says, football 'isn't like a jeans shop where people can go somewhere else'. Fortunately I'm one of the lucky ones – I do have somewhere else to go: FC United of Manchester in the Unibond First.

Mike Birtwistle, via email

Brothers United In Triumph

Source: Edited from The Independent on Sunday

Ryan isn't the only Giggs to play on the wing for United and win a title this season; his younger brother Rhodri turns out on the right (and sometimes as a striker) for FC United of Manchester, the club set up by fans opposed to the Glazers' takeover at Old Trafford. This season they are First Division champions of the North West Counties League, having won the Second Division last year.

FC United rise and shine on a sense of community

Source: The Guardian

While Manchester United have been slaying the Premiership, rebel offshoot FC United have been setting their own records.
David Conn
May 9, 2007 12:24 AM

FC United of Manchester, formed by fans opposed to Malcolm Glazer's takeover at Old Trafford, have travelled a joyfully long way from mere rebellion. At Gigg Lane, a week before "Big" United were confirmed as Premiership champions, FC fans stood and sang throughout a 5-0 demolition of Formby, completing their own second season of record-breaking, championship-winning promotion.

In gorgeous weather surely never previously witnessed in April in Bury, in the raucous section of the Main Stand and the packed Manchester Road End, the fans belted out Sloop John B, customised as their season's anthem: "I wanna go home/I wanna go ho-o-ome/This is the worst trip/I've ever been on."

There is a depth to this commitment which quite unexpectedly caught me by the throat, got me in the eyes. FC United may have started in protest at the heart-sinking economics which devoured Manchester United but it is powered by the fans' heartfelt attachment to football and the collective belonging they feel it represents. The relationship with "Big" United is complex; most FC fans still support the club - packing the pubs and Gigg Lane social club to roar United on to the 4-2 win at Everton before FC's game last week - but they grew alienated, over time, from the business which is Manchester United.

Mike Turton, 44, an electricians' supervisor, who was at the Formby match with his daughter Danielle and sons, Ryan and Thomas, is a typical FC founding father. An Old Trafford regular for 31 years, he packed in on May 12 2005 - they can all recite the date - when the Glazers, from their Florida base, finally acquired United with their £810m hedge fund-leveraged deal.

"I didn't leave because of the takeover," he said. "That was just the final push I needed to get out. It started in the Nineties; winning trophies was very nice but I didn't support United to win trophies. I'd stopped enjoying it. The prices were rising and I started wondering why I was forking out to fund the players' ridiculous wages.

"I love what we've built here, I'm really proud of it. I like to think it's in the best Manchester tradition of protest, along the lines of the suffragettes and the Trades Union movement, which have their roots here."

You hear this Manc pride a lot as well as bemusement that fans of other clubs have not protested against their takeovers - "Not even Liverpool," the FC fans all murmur. Here they have moved on, to building their own club according to the principles they argued for when campaigning: supporter-ownership, with members (2,500 of them) voting for the board and policies; ticket prices affordable at £7 for adults, £2 for under...#8209;16s, and an agreement with stewards that supporters can stand. The club has established a youth policy which seeks to work with junior clubs who often feel exploited by the way professional clubs' academies trawl for the best players. FCUM have also made partnerships with social welfare and community organisations, seeking to welcome marginalised groups and introduce football as a good presence in their lives.

Andy Walsh, the former Militant firebrand and leader of the United fans' anti...#8209;Murdoch and anti-Glazer campaigns, has been reinvented here into FC United's general manager, all trim in a blue check suit and club tie, directing details on his walkie-talkie - stewards, tickets, match day volunteers.

"Most people here still love United," Walsh said, "but they love their feeling for United, which grew from following the club for years, not the big business which came to exploit that loyalty. We're aiming to show a football club can be run by and for supporters, open to all sections of society."

The Formby match was designated a youth day, with under-16s allowed in free and young people before the game taking part in drama, banner-making and working with the Touch of Class rap collective, which promotes an anti-gun message. Thomas Cullen, a coach at Trafford Athletic Club, brought a group; he said he believed one lad had just been saved from being excluded by his school. "His teacher is here and she saw a different side of him," he said. "This is great for them. They're mostly black lads from Hulme and Moss Side but not one has ever been to a match at Old Trafford because they can't afford it."

Bill Evans, manager of Rochdale Children's Rights and Advocacy Services, brought 30 children, all in local authority care, saying it was a "positive way for them to feel included". Maxine Seager of the Tameside Youth Service, a disaffected "Big" United fan herself, came with 70 kids - "Two coach loads," she said, grinning and rolling her eyes.

"They're loving it, buzzing. They get so much out of this and we work our programmes, on anti-racism and social cohesion, around coming to the game."

The youth day events were organised by Vinny Thompson, who seemed staggered by his own football conversion: "To go from parading on terraces all over Europe to being a lentil-eating social worker in two years is pretty bloody amazing."

The thirty- and fortysomething Stretford End veterans who formed FC United are painfully aware that Premiership ticket hikes have largely priced out the next generation of fans, so are replenishing their own ranks with the regular £2 entry price and this youth day. The place was teeming with kids, a sight long disappeared from top-flight football. One group of eight, aged 11 to 14, marching along with classic red, white and black scarves around their necks and not an adult in sight, seemed like a Life On Mars throwback to the 1970s. One eloquently explained why they come: "The atmosphere's mint."

The 3,847 who made it to the Formby game may not represent the dent in the Glazers' business plan some hoped for but it is many more than Bury had at their last home game, a phenomenon at the base of football's pyramid. The five goals strolled in took FC's total this season to 157 and a finish on 112 points; both are records. After the game the North West Counties League title was presented to Dave Chadwick, FC's mountainous captain, Walsh discreetly handing out the champagne. Beaming, bowing to shake hands with crowds of kids at the Manchester Road End, the players looked disbelieving, that tough semi-pro careers have turned out this glorious.

Karl Marginson, the former Rother-ham United and non-league striker who has proved the perfect manager, said he has understood FC's philosophy more with time. "It's a very special thing to be part of. I try to instil its importance in the players, that this is the fans' club."

In the celebrating stands they were mixing fond player ditties, anti-Glazer chants and pro-FC compositions. To the tune of Anarchy in the UK they roared: "I am an FC fan/I am Mancunian."

This is a football club they have fashioned for themselves out of belief and conviction. While Big United chase the Double at Wembley, they are off to the UniBond Northern Premier League next season. It seems like the best trip they have ever been on.

Manchester's proud tradition of protest

Peterloo

The army's slaughter of 11 people attending a mass rally for parliamentary reform in 1819 accelerated popular pressure for democracy

Marx and Engels

Karl Marx's political ally, Friedrich Engels, lived in Manchester and based his 1844 classic, The Condition of the Working Class in England, on the city's inequalities

Trades Union Congress

Formed in 1868 at the Mechanics Institute in Manchester

Suffragettes

The Women's Social and Political Union, that lobbied for the vote, was formed by Emmeline Pankhurst at her home in Manchester in 1903

Right to roam

The campaign for access to the countryside was boosted by the 1932 Kinder Trespass, led by the Manchester activist Benny Rothman

Punk rock

A Sex Pistols gig at the Lesser Free Trade Hall in 1976 is often heralded as the birth of punk and inspired a generation of Manchester music

FC United of Manchester

Formed in 2005 by Manchester United fans protesting at the Glazer takeover

Man Utd’s Title: A Triumphant Franchise

Edited From: Goal.com

And there is one tiny, but not inconspicuous, fly in the ointment. In the wake of the takeover by the Glazer family a number of disgruntled United fans formed a breakaway club called FC United. They took their place in the lowest levels of the football hierarchy but two seasons on they have won consecutive promotions and this season managed a cup and league double. Record attendances for that level of football and tons of goals have made FC United a real draw for the divisions in which they have played. They’ve brought a number of disillusioned United fans back to an old, almost-forgotten way of football with affordable prices, fathers taking children, and supporters welcome because they support the team not because they will financially utilize a significant number of items of merchandise inventory during the fiscal period.

FC United are no threat to the Glazers nor to their far-flung franchise but it would be interesting to project some years into the future and see where the relative empires will be. For now the Glazers are safe. Tolerated if not loved, but they will be on trial for years into the future especially if United go into temporary decline once Fergie has had enough.