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The celebrations were wild, unbridled, and raw. Each player letting out their own primal scream. As champagne corks popped and spontaneous chants erupted around the dressing room you'd have been forgiven for thinking one team had just won a European cup with the final kick of the match. Bare chested and victorious they could not contain their delight as the losing team trudged out of their dressing room to begin another journey home wondering what might have been. The date was 20th September 2009. It was an afternoon which ended with the unusual sight of a grown man standing outside his own house with his eyes raised up to the heavens imploring the Gods of football to answer one simple question "seven minutes? seven fucking minutes?". Injury time. Fergie time. Call it what you want, but it had stopped the much heralded "project" in it's tracks. A marker was laid down as the Mancunian Gods of Winners Medals delivered a knock out blow to their noisy neighbours.
The celebrations were wild, unbridled, and raw. Each player letting out their own primal scream. As champagne corks popped and spontaneous chants erupted around the dressing room you'd have been forgiven for thinking one team had just won a a European cup with the final kick of the match. Bare chested and victorious they could not contain their delight as the losing team trudged out of their dressing room to begin another journey home wondering what might have been. The date was 12th February 2011. Boy wonder had written the headlines all neutral observers were secretly hoping for. In a flash of agility which belied his ponderous frame and a sprinkling of luck as the ball cannoned off his shin pad, the noisy neighbours had once again been gagged.
The celebrations were wild, unbridled, and raw. Each player letting out their own primal scream. As champagne corks popped and spontaneous chants erupted around the dressing room you'd have been forgiven for thinking one team had just won a European cup with the final kick of the match. Bare chested and victorious they could not contain their delight as the losing team trudged out of their dressing room to begin another journey home wondering what might have been. The date was 11th August 2011. Another afternoon which left an indelible impression upon many of us. This time it wasn't the Gods we looked up to or the devils we looked down upon to make sense of our misery. All the questions we needed answering were knocked out with one line. One comment. One remark which summed up an apparent gulf in class. "We gave them a lesson in football".
The question which has been left unanswered for me is simple - what's in a celebration? Do we judge the achievement by the celebration? Is the size of the task directly related to the explosion of joy? Beating your neighbours, your arch nemesis should always be a moment to be savoured. But is beating plucky Norwich City, with a last minute goal, a few days after losing to an infantile Ajax team, really the stuff of dreams? As Ryan of the Rovers charged towards the legions of Green & Golds and MIB's with both fists pumping and face contorted like a man who had just caught his brother in bed with his wife, I couldn't help but wonder what it all meant.
The answer to the question lies in the previous celebrations. Each one told it's own story. The first inevitable. The second lucky. The third, delusional. Yet yesterday as the frankly innocuous task of beating a newly promoted side had been elevated to the same gilded achievement as a last minute winner against your enemy, another much darker realisation was slowly creeping hold of the red side of Manchester. For a long time they had been the pace setters, the standard bearers, the team against which all achievement was measured. Yet they had somehow found themselves somewhere else completely. Underdogs, expending every ounce of energy and luck available to them simply to stay in touch. A team who's great achievement in the face of a new reality in Manchester would be simply to not be out of a race they were unlikely to win.
That is not to say that Manchester United are finished - far from it. We are however nearer and nearer to a time when the experience of these battles will be gone. The likes of Ryan of the Rovers and The Ginger Bastard will not be around to hold the house of cards together. The master of the house will be fighting senility rather than fighting for honours in the league. Those wild celebrations will become wilder as the successes become rarer. The odd derby victory will be cold comfort held aloft as serious achievement. Victories at the league's also rans will take on greater and greater significance. This isn't wishful thinking on my part, but neither is it a fait accompli. Rather it's a change in the wind. They will fight against it, and as the celebrations yesterday showed, at times they will feel they are succeeding. Ultimately though, they'll end up covered in piss, bitter, and angry. The worm turned, and I saw it in the celebrations.
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