Phil Ridley
Last night’s win at Blackburn brought back memories and a feeling I’ve not had about United in a very long time.
Nothing to do with scraping a win when we maybe didn’t deserve it, or travelling over the Pennines to deepest, darkest Lancashire. Just the simple joy you get when your football team wins.
Nowadays, absolutely everything is analysed, overanalysed, dissected and spun in every direction you can think of.
There’s the brilliant Roy’s View, telling us what opposition fans think about us before and after a game, or what to expect from a new player before we’ve seen them play. Then there’s Sam and Riley, looking at and explaining every stat possible on Formline.
It’s all brilliant. I, along with many others, read and listen intently to every article and new pod in the hope of learning something I’d never have found out otherwise.
When a game’s being played, there are all manner of ways to find out how it’s going and how well or badly United are playing. There are always plenty of reactive Twitter posts, positive and negative, depending on how the writer views the amount of liquid in their cup. Sky Sports News always has a has-been at the ground to give their ‘expert’ opinion. Some people even have these dodgy stick things that apparently allow you to watch every game, among other things, for a small annual fee…
But last night was different, for me at least. It reminded me of being a kid again.
I’ve mentioned before that I was brought up near London in the 80s and early 90s. Other than Teletext or the rare occasion we were talked about in the national press, my only real source of United info was my dad. He’d ring to tell me all about the most recent game or the signings we were making.
Anyone who knows the legend that is my old man will understand when I say that most of what I found out came from a pretty negative point of view.
One thing that lack of constant info gave me was a real joy in finding out we’d won a game, after the event. I rarely got to find out how we’d won and, in truth, I didn’t really care.
Which brings me back to last night and our win away at Blackburn.
My wife and I have a rule when we’re on holiday: phones stay in the room when we leave the hotel. So, as we headed out last night, the last bits of info I had were the positive reports from Leicester about our new signing… and a starting XI I couldn’t figure out.
We chose to avoid bars with football on while walking around the streets of Palmanova.
I only found out we’d won when we got back to the room and I checked my phone. Just knowing we’d won, and very little else, gave me a buzz I’d not really felt in years. I went to bed without doing any more digging into how we’d won.
Obviously, I’m now going to have a deep dive into all the brilliant information available to us. But I’m going to keep in mind something I think many of us have lost sight of.
We won a game of football.
When it comes down to it, that’s all that matters to a football fan!
Up the Blades!