The Return of the Prawn Sandwich Brigade

By: Daryl | January 2nd, 2008

Alex Ferguson quite crowd You might think Sir Alex Ferguson would be happy his team bounced back from defeat at West Ham to beat Birmingham City 1-0 at Old Trafford yesterday. You’d be wrong. Instead Fergie has been venting his anger at Manchester United fans for not making enough noise. “The crowd were dead,” he grumped. “That was the quietest I have heard the crowd and it’s disappointing because we needed the crowd today. We have come through a difficult period of game after game and in moments like these we need a lift. But it was like a funeral out there.”

Ouchy. Fergie was serving the final game of his two match touchline ban, so maybe the acoustics in the director’s box aren’t as good as they are down in the dugout. But the angry old Scot wasn’t impressed with what he heard, and has his own theory about how a 75,459 crowd can be so quiet.

“There have been periods like this before,” said the Scot. “It’s not just today, it happened a few years ago as well when we were the dominant team in the league. The crowd come to be entertained but sometimes we need them to help us get the right kind of performance.”

I wouldn’t exactly call Man Utd dominant right now, what with Arsenal being top of the league and all, but what Fergie’s basically saying is that when Manchester United play the kind of champagne football we’ve seen from Ronaldo and co. recently it attracts the type of fan that rolls up to Old Trafford for a show, more like a trip to the theatre than the Theatre of Dreams.

This isn’t a new problem of course. Who can forget Roy Keane’s legendary rant against the corporate fans dubbed the prawn sandwich brigade?

Seems this type of supporter is an inevitable outcome of high ticket prices and corporate hospitality, and to some extent Manchester United have only got themselves to blame. I’m guessing the type of fan committed (and possibly crazy) enough to go and follow FC United would have been cheering the team on against Birmingham City. But even real fans, like memeber of the Independent Manchester United Supporters Association claim they’re being restricted by Manchester United’s own policies, which they’ve been campaigning against for years now. “You can’t stand up to make a noise,” IMUSA spokesman Colin Hendrie said. “If you try to stand up, you’ve got stewards who are ejecting you, they’re taking your season ticket away from you. It’s almost like a police state in a football ground now and if you do stand up, people will take your arm, put it behind the back of your neck and throw you out of the ground.”

I can’t vouch for the seafood sandwich choices Old Trafford offered yesterday, but if fans aren’t even allowed to stand and cheer then what chance is there of a decent atmosphere? And seems Fergie might have to learn to love silence after Cristiano Ronaldo and Carlos Tevez gave the fairweather fans a little taste of what they came for with this goal .