Ratty

You can't start a fire.
You can't start a fire without a spark.
This gun's for hire.
Even if we're just dancin' in the dark.

[TV Football 1968-92 @1968Tv]

Big League Soccer
(Overseas Viewers Only, due to TV blackout on BBC & ITV)
September 1985
Manchester City 0-3 Manchester Utd
Commentator Brian Moore
#ManCity #MUFC

[One Norman Whiteside @WhitesideOne]

OTD in 1981 - League Division One

LIVERPOOL 1
Terry McDermott 74' (pen)
MANCHESTER UNITED 2
Kevin Moran 24'
Arthur Albiston 89'

Anfield 41,438

[SUPERB FOOTY PICS @SuperbFootyPics]

Manchester United
Great Picture Of The Lawman

[SUPERB FOOTY PICS @SuperbFootyPics]

Manchester United FC
The Late Great Laurie Cunningham

[Yesterday's Britain, A Better Britain. @YesterdaysBrit1]

Kids building a bonfire in 1979, in preparation for the 5th November.
I certainly did this when I was a kid in the seventies.

[Douglas Bagley @dougbagleyfdl]

All away fans who went to Old Trafford and Manchester United away in the 80’s and 90’s will remember the walk from the Cricket Ground past the Lou Macari chip shop. Great memories.

[Football Away Days @AwayDaysFB]

No £80 replica shirts. No phones filming every second. No marketing telling you how special it all was. Nobody flying in from Singapore after paying £700 for a ticket.

Just lads getting there hours early and queuing forever at the turnstiles. Cold hands, muddy terraces, and all that mattered was bagging your spot on the wall. Football when it was simple. 👏🏻👏🏻

[Magpie Media @MagpieMediaX]

Why are Sky persisting with this weird and completely false narrative that everyone wanted Liverpool to win today? Absolutely no one in their right mind would ever support them horrible bastards outside of Merseyside and Ireland man 🤣🤣🤣

[Karl Hanssens @HanssensKarl]

Season 1979-80 ... some scans ... @utdbeforfergie

[FeelGoodThoughts @feelgoodtale]

CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL BORN IN 1930's, 1940's, 50's, 60's, 70's and Early 80's !!!

First, you survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us. They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a tin, and didn't get tested for diabetes. Then after that trauma, your baby cots were covered with bright coloured lead-based paints. You had no childproof lids on medicine ..medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when you rode your bikes, you had no helmets, not to mention, the risks you took hitch-hiking .. As children, you would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags. Riding in the back of a van - loose - was always great fun. You drank water from the garden hosepipe and NOT from a bottle. You shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this. You ate cakes, white bread and real butter and drank pop with sugar in it, but you weren't overweight because...... YOU WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!!

You would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the street lights came on. No one was able to reach you all day. And you were OK. You would spend hours building your go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out you forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, you learned to solve the problem . You did not have Play stations, Nintendo's, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 99 channels on cable, no video tape movies, no surround sound, no mobile phones, no text messaging, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms..........

YOU HAD FRIENDS and you went outside and found them! You fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents you played with worms(well most boys did) and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever. You made up games with sticks and tennis balls and although you were told it would happen, you did not poke out any eyes. You rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just yelled for them! Local teams had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!! The idea of a parent bailing you out if you broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law! This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever! The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas. You had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and you learned HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL! And YOU are one of them! CONGRATULATIONS! You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated our lives for our own good.

And while you are at it, forward it to your kids so they will know how brave their parents were

[Karl Hanssens @HanssensKarl]

Anfield Road ... Oct 1981 ... dancing in the rain ... Gary Bailey is more than happy with Arthur Albiston's fantastic last-minute winner ... United's travelling fans celebrating in the background ... great picture ... Liverpool - MUFC ... 1-2 ... @UtdBeforFergie

[Katie Hopkins @KTHopkins]

Did the chumba whumba ‘body positivity’ brigade only mean it until there was GLP1’s?

And can Alison Hammond get over herself ffs

[Robert Wilkinson @robertwlk]

I’m trying to pick a good film to have on in the background while I look at my phone all night.

[Paul Gaskell @pgaskell13]

45 years ago today, Bryan Robson signed for United

A defensive midfielder, attacking midfielder, he could head, tackle, score goals, the most complete footballer I’ve ever seen and he carried the team and a whole generation of fans along with him

[Henry Winter @henrywinter]

Guilty, guilty, sham and shame. How on earth can Manchester City appeal a verdict as devastating and damning as the one passed down by the independent commission investigating breaches of financial regulations? City will appeal, of course, and it’s their right under Premier League rules. They clearly will appeal, claiming the verdict is “unsafe” but they are surely simply delaying the inevitable punishment, making themselves even more unpopular, damaging their club and the game further.

For justice to truly prevail in this case, punishment has to be swift. For City to start the long journey back on the road to redemption, they have to take their medicine. These are dark days in the history of the Premier League and they are darkest at the Etihad. City's owners have to see the light, accept their guilt and begin the process of rehabilitation.

An appeal involving deny, deny, delay, delay, shreds any sporting integrity this season has. The thought of this taking years to resolve – doubtless via the High Court - feels potentially ruinous, certainly deeply damaging, for the sport. How many people will be turned off by a league stained by a constantly updated asterix, by a sport effectively run by lawyers. City have to take their medicine now.

For sporting competitions to survive and thrive, there has to be a willingness on all parties to play fair on and off the field. That may sound naive, an outdated purist principle, but it matters to many. A few engaged in the game will take short-cuts but one of the reasons why the Premier League is so followed around the world is because of the perception of its essential honesty.

Players give everything from first minute to last. Promoted teams can occasionally trouble the established order. But industrial-level cooking of the books highlighted in the independent commission’s report, effectively allowing City, regular champions, to spend more on players will shake confidence in the competition.

City’s owners have to think very carefully, not least about their own and their famous club’s reputational damage. Read the room. Read the statement. How can they possibly answer the powerful, damning language used in detailing the offences devised to circumvent FFP. Others were playing by the rules, City were bending them, the commission found. City fans can argue that FFP/PSR/SCR rules are anti-competitive, and protect the “cartel” as they see it, but City signed up to the rules.

And, then, in the words of the Premier League CEO Richard Masters, “systematically broke” those rules for “nearly a decade”. Masters deserves to feel vindicated for his quiet, firm leadership of the league in this long, tense case against such a wealthy, self-confident member.

Many of the 40 pages of findings in the "core decision" contain blow after blow to City. If the Premier League versus Manchester City were a boxing bout, the referee would have stepped in. “Sham contracts”, “misstated accounts”, “concealed the true state of its finances from its auditors and football regulators”. “Egregious acts of non-cooperation”. Basically, deception writ large.

A phrase that will now pass into the annals of footballing infamy is the “Disguised Funding Scheme” whereby companies “were only required to pay a portion of the relevant sponsorship fees. The remainder was funded by Abu Dhabi United Group Investment & Development Ltd”. ADUG. City’s owners. The “Disguised Funding Scheme” basically overstated sponsorship income by £830.69m. A staggering amount.

This is now not about Manchester City the club, but Manchester City the ownership, including the chief executive Ferran Soriano. They have to stop embarrassing the club and the sport. They have to stop letting down their fans. City’s owners have to consider the relentless abuse coming the way of fans, players and coaching staff in games to come, starting when entering what will be a bear-pit at Anfield on October 11.

Soriano, assuming he attends, can expect a particularly uncomfortable afternoon in his seat and in the Liverpool boardroom. It’s hard to see how he keeps his job – if City’s appeal fails. Fit and proper person?

In continuing to protest their innocence, City claim they have “irrefutable evidence” to defend themselves. If so, why weren’t three independent judges persuaded? City have had long enough, employed exceptional briefs, and still lost.

Having been found guilty of doing the wrong thing, City now have to do the right thing and that is accept the inevitability of sanctions and seek some form of settlement with the Premier League. They will not, of course: too proud, too defiant, still too convinced of their innocence despite the weight of this report. They will become outcasts even without yet being cast out. That is to come.

City's owners have to acknowledge the impact their activities had on other clubs, and accept the considerable compensation claims flooding their way from other clubs they pipped to trophies, possibly even from players. If they’re sensible they will look for a settlement that includes substantial compensation, running into hundreds of millions of pounds, to aggrieved clubs who missed out on trophies, on prize money. Maybe that £830.69m should be the figure considered in any settlement. Fitting.

City's owners have to see sense. The alternative is years and fortunes spent in the courts. Nobody wins. Except the lawyers. Football loses, because the game remains on hold until City are punished.

[Liam Whelan @liam11]

These are the fans I feel sorry for. Supported his club through thick and thin and sold a dream by owners who had no right to be there. The ownership model in the Premier league sticks bar 1 or 2 clubs.

[Remo @Remo26599]

Prestwich Col currently running up Bury New Road with his gruds on his head singing “We’re not really here”…..

[lisahsmithlhs @lisahsmithlhs]

Dogs are a gift from Heaven 🐶💞😘🙏🏼

[U2 @U2]

Back home in Dublin… No better way to spend our 50th anniversary than with the beautiful souls of Grafton Street last night 🇮🇪

[Lee .. @jackdobbie1]

@PrestwichBlue what’s that you cheating blue cunts