Football Daily | Manchester United and a bright red vision of the future lacking in detail
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The 1995-96 season was a significant moment for football in Manchester. United won the Double as their hapless neighbours, City, were relegated in fittingly farcical circumstances. Off the field (or adjacent to it, at least), United were gold-plating their dominance with the completion of a new North Stand that made Old Trafford the biggest club stadium in England. And in what must have felt like a footnote at the time, Manchester was awarded the 2002 Commonwealth Games, with a bid based around a new, purpose-built stadium on a brownfield site. Fast-forward three decades, and the Etihad is now home to English football’s dominant force, an all-conquering team who play in sky blue. It’s been a journey that would take some explaining to a tracksuited, gum-chewing Alex Ferguson if you were to time-travel back to the mid-90s in search of affordable Oasis tickets. Old Trafford’s North Stand is now the Sir Alex Ferguson stand, but not much else has changed at United’s once-palatial home since their glory days. The last major upgrade works were in 2006 and the stadium has entered a post-industrial decline that dovetails with the team’s waning fortunes. One architect looking into United’s proposed regeneration plans had this to say about the former Theatre of Dreams: “Wiring, electrical installation … everything is approaching the end of its useful life.”
Noble Francis’s exposition on playing out from the back (yesterday’s Football Daily letters) reminded me that it can also be done from set-pieces … although no one seemed to have explained to Hibs’ Nectarios Triantis, back in March, how it should be done. Quickly including two of his teammates in this manoeuvre wasn’t – we assume – quite what was intended” – Ken Muir.
The photo of the waterlogged pitch in yesterday’s Memory Lane (full email edition) brought to mind the iconic ‘Splash’ photo of Tom Finney (and a very well-hidden Wally Bellett) at Stamford Bridge in 1965. It was considered so defining an image that the statue of Sir Tom outside Deepdale is based on the same picture. Beloved as he is, I’m not sure we’ll be seeing a bronze immortalisation of an aquaplaning Nobby Solano outside St James’s any time soon” – Mike Slattery.
