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7 months ago
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4.12pm GMT
“Afternoon Rob,” says Matt Emerson. “I don’t have a dog in this fight, but this fixture will always take me back to the mid-eighties, when I was a ‘cockney’ student in Liverpool. I always stayed out of the city centre when Man Utd came to down, mainly due to concerns that, if they heard my accent, the two sets of supporters would stop fighting each other and gang up on a common enemy...”
4.12pm GMT
“I like to think I’m a well balanced and pretty mild-mannered man,” says Kevin McManus. “But I’m also self- aware enough to know this goes out the window when we are playing the hated Man U. It isnt just me either. The whole of the Kop seems to fall prey to a collective fervour whenever Man U turn up. I took a girlfriend to the game once which was a huge mistake. She found the passion and the hatred all too much and couldnt get her head around it. Of course she was right - it is totally unreasonable for otherwise sensible grown men and women to act like that for a few hours. But I have to say it just kind of feels right when it is directed at Man U.”
One thing that’s interesting is that it wasn’t always thus. I watched the 1977 FA Cup final last week, and there was (to modern eyes) an extraordinary level of goodwill on and off the field. That all changed in the late seventies and early eighties.
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