The new season’s fixtures are now out and unusually we have been given a big game for our first fixture. Now to the younger fan a trip to Old Trafford may not seem that ‘big’, but it is. It doesn’t matter how poor they currently are and whether you like it or not, United rank along only Real and Barca as one of the three clubs with true global appeal. It has been that way since the end of the Second World War and will be thus for a long time yet, regardless of their performances.
As soon as the fixture was announced, my mind went straight back to August 19th 1989. It was less than three months since St Michael Thomas Day – hence the gratuitous use of Mickey and me together on the 22nd anniversary – and we went to OT as Champions, full of hope and expectations. I had my inflatable League Champions trophy with me, albeit patched up after being deflated by a stray cigarette at the previous weekend’s Charity Shield loss to Liverpool.
What followed was a bizarre mix of the ridiculous to the damn right awful.
This was the United of Fergie, but not the successful one that we remember today, he had been at United for three very poor years and it was widely expected that failure this season would result in a sacking and an ignimious return back up across the border. Mark Robins goal against Forest prevented that, but this team was not the all conquering United of the ’90s and we felt certain that victory would be ours.
The rest, as they say is history. If you want to look up the match on YouTube, be my guest; I certainly don’t want to relive it! We got our revenge the following season and even though we were deducted two of three points that afternoon we won the League in 1991, celebrating it at home against United on the evening of Monday May 6th, after Forest had beaten Liverpool earlier on in the day.
I’ll be doing a ‘the good, the bad and the ugly’ review of our various opening day matches over the next couple of weeks, but after today’s announcement, I needed to get this particular match buried back where it belongs. Good ridence to bad rubbish!