BY THE TIME that Erik ten Hag took the microphone to address the crowd after Manchester United’s final Premier League game last Sunday, thoughts had already long been fixed on the FA Cup final with Manchester City.
His speech about bringing the trophy back to Old Trafford led to a rousing reception from the stands.
The roars could also be heard echoing outside, down Matt Busby Way or towards Salford Quays.
These are some of the roads where the fanzine sellers of United We Stand and Red News were already stationed. They are well used to missing important moments in the final minutes in order to be in position for the post-match rush.
“When you’re selling and we’ve had a bad result it’s like we’re the ones to get the blame,” UWS seller Anthony Bloom laughs. “You’ll get ‘Oh, I don’t know why you’re selling that s**t’. It’s not like we’re the ones who have picked the team.”
Sunday really was the calm before the storm, and as fans filtered out following the win over Fulham the words of their manager seemed to electrify the atmosphere.
Usually it’s late goals that the fanzine sellers won’t see live, but Ten Hag’s speech was a final rallying call before a date at Wembley that perfectly illustrates just how much the landscape of football in England – let alone Manchester – has changed in the decade since Alex Ferguson retired and the Abu Dhabi juggernaut across the city has ramped up.
City, in a season which saw the Premier League level 115 charges of financial breaches against them, were crowned champions for the fifth time in six years.
Pep Guardiola is the first manager since Ferguson to claim three titles in a row while their dominance has brought them to the brink of replicating another historic feat – a treble of league, FA Cup and Champions League glory.
“If we win, it will top everything post-Ferguson,” UWS seller Anthony Shaw adds.
With what’s at stake, this has the potential to be something we will be talking about in 30 years’ time. Whatever happens I just hope the players understand what it means.”
Manchester will be a city divided, in every sense.
Police have already made sure of that. Piccadilly, and the surrounding areas in the centre of town where some of United’s away coaches would normally depart, have been allocated for City fans only on Saturday morning, meaning those Reds travelling on United We Stand’s ‘Monkey Bus’ have had to rearrange and set off from a pub in Salford.
Train strikes in the UK have added to the travel restrictions with both sets of supporters being advised to use designated motorways and service stations en route to London.
On Sunday, John Ashton, another seller and regular voice on the popular United We Stand podcast who will be Wembley-bound on Saturday, could relax and soak in the sun while sharing a pie and chips with his five-year-old son, Harley.
But, like everyone, the Cup final and everything it represents, looms.
United stopped Liverpool doing a treble in 1977 and then did the same to Everton in ’85. On both occasions United lifted the FA Cup to spoil the party.
“It will be the best day of the last 10 years or the worst. There’s no in between. We’re not going to share the trophy and walk down the road together are we,” Ashton says.
“I always thought Liverpool winning the European Cup and the league would be horrendous. But I’m 40 now. I don’t let it bother me. I remember being nine-years-old and crying on my way home from Wembley after losing to Sheffield Wednesday.
But City will never get the respect their team probably deserve because of the manner of how they do it. Their supporters don’t know how to behave at the top table. I hate Liverpool but I kind of get it with them. With City it’s a plastic feel.
“As I said, I’m 40 now. I’ve a job and a wife and a kid. If they win I’ll just turn off the telly and be fine.”
That, in a nutshell, encapsulates the contradictions every football fan wrestles with to try and make sense of the tension.
In one breath the enormity of what’s at stake and what it means cannot be denied, yet in the next its significance can be, quite understandably, rationally underplayed.
These are the emotional battles that simply add to the sense of occasion in a week which will could define a generation’s memory.
Back in October, The 42 visited Manchester to spend time with City fans coming to terms with a club that had changed beyond all recognition.
United fans have had to endure a kind of regressive alteration to the status quo.
Barney, editor of Red News since 1987, opted for a Subbuteo-style figure of Ten Hag on the cover of the latest issue as he explains the sense of dread and excitement at what is to come.
“Bite nails and hope. Erik has given us some of that back. There is still some way to go, but you never write off United, and then if [we win]… You’ll see me knee deep in cigars and champagne. Otherwise, I’ll see you in August.
“For me, this feels like the all or nothing final,” he adds. “It will be one you will never want to forget or one you will always try and erase. Moscow [for the 2008 Champions League final, was bad enough, the whole trip, its length, expense, how it came down to those penalties, worth it or worthless in seconds, and this is on an even bigger scale to a European Cup Final shoot-out if that seems possible, though plausible to anyone who gets what this game actually means. It's everything."
For Stu Edwards, another of the veteran UWS sellers, this is a Cup final that provides a sense of life coming full circle.
He is 47 now and remembers going home and away with United when they did the Treble in 1999. Almost a quarter of a century later and his daughter's boyfriend is also on that same path.
"Just one problem, he's the other side," he laughs. "But he's 21 and living his dream, exactly what I did. I can't knock him. But I won't be meeting him for a photo outside on Wembley Way."
Edwards also won't be on the Monkey Bus with the others, instead he will be setting off in the car with his 13-year-old son Archie, who has started to come to games more regularly alongside his father in the Stretford End.
“Time moves on and things change, going to the match changes,” he reasons.
Even United are the underdog now but once they turn up and give 100 per cent that’s all we can ask for. Archie believes we can win and deep, deep down I believe we can too.”