Deliver Us From Swedish Furniture

The Wombles help destroy the Glazers and Sky?

Over the weekend I went to watch a slightly unusual friendly footy match between AFC Wimbledon and FC United - both clubs set up by fans when Wimbledon (now MK Dons) and Manchester United alienated them (if you don’t know the stories, go Google it) There has been a strong link between the clubs after AFC gave the FC guys help when they were setting themselves up, so the friendly was essentially a ‘Thank you’. This shone through from the fans, partly as this was a symbol of solidarity and partly as my mate, a former Man United FC supporter, put it ‘This is like playing in the Champion’s League for us, we don’t normally get any further south than Stoke’. He then walked me through the players, which mainly consisted of ‘he was on United/Stockport/Bury’s books as a kid’, or ‘he could have been really good, but as you can see. training seems to get in the way of his eating and drinking’. For a bit more glamour by association, they have Ryan Giggs’ brother on their books, who looks very similar on the pitch, but without that gazelle like quality of his brother.

The football itself was OK, not good enough to set your heart racing and not poor enough to be funny, basically the reason why lower league football fans are the most masochistic pople on the planet for watching this stuff week-in, week-out. It was fun watching this as a novelty in the sun, but can you imagine watching this stuff in Runcorn, when it’s pissing down in December….. Still the FC lot livened things up with a near continual barrage of songs mainly built around Mancunian band’s standards (Giggs will tear you apart….again), threatening the Glazers (and Sky) or just the usual slagging off Manchester City, Liverpool, Leeds…. They also managed a quick song of solidarity with the Wombles fans with ‘You can stick your Milton Keynes up your arse…’ however, being a bunch of Mancs, it quickly became ‘You can stick your Milton Keynes (and Leeds) up your arse…’  

The second half got a bit dull as players got knackered (they’d been off over the summer and some fitness levels weren’t quite up to the mark!) but right on queue abunch of local kids climbed on top of the garages across the road to see what was going on. As soon as they were spotted wearing Chelsea shirts, they quickly became the targets of the chanting and the FC lot quickly forgot this was an FC United game and not a Manchster United one - ‘You’re not Chelsea anymore…’, ‘You’re worth nuffin’, cos you sold your arse to Russians…’ Then a bunch of 18 year old FC United fans started chanting ‘Where were you when you were shit?’ I guess they were born during the Ferguson era, so they must have had their allegiances tested during those countless FA Cups, Premiership titles and the odd Champion’s League…..

All in all though it was a great atmosphere; fans singing, a bit of banter and properly feeling united behind a cause rather than feeling like half the people there are tourists of glory hunters. Oh yeah in case you were wondering, AFC won it 2-0