I cannot and will not ever have one iota of sympathy for that club or its fans. I loathe the colour red, I detest the word 'united', and I find their hordes of plastic fans an absolute affront to common decency.
As a kid in the playground at school I would pretend to be Ken Mulhearn (ask your parents!), and if an opposing player was a plastic rag I would warn him not to try and score past me or I'd pummel the little fucker into a coma (what a lovely kid I must have been). Other kids that were Arsenal or Chelsea fans would score past me and I wouldn't be too bothered, but woe betide any junior rag.
So even at that tender age I had a deep-rooted hatred for anything or anyone affiliated with that club. A primary school kid with an intense, almost psychotic anger towards any schoolmate who even dared to joke about following that foul disease from Trafford that calls itself a football club.
Fast forward many many years. I'm an old, overweight, balding, mess of a human being: a broken marriage and an unhealthy fixation with playing the guitar and indulging my fondness for booze-filled giggling fits and sherbet fountains (and The Beatles). But my dislike of that one bastard club is as deep and as intense as it was all those years ago when all I wanted was to score the winning goal for City in an FA Cup Final, and kiss Hayley Mills, as she was in 'Whistle Down The Wind'.