United Road Take Me Home

Come back Tom Tyrrell

Since when did XFM have anything to do with football? I only ask because the station - purveyors of stodgy ‘indie’ guitar-rock to the people of the North West for about 18 months now – have this season assumed exclusive rights for radio commentaries on United games. This is one of two small, but to mind fairly significant, off the pitch changes that took place during the close season, neither of which have been much discussed in the red-related media. So I’ll discuss them now.

At least with Century there was some kind of footballing pedigree, if you can call it that, where the Legends have long broken up the never-ending stream of Rick Astley and Hazel Dean hits. On XFM football just sits there, totally incongruous, unrelated to anything around it, apart perhaps from the fact that the station overlords decided it sits well with the laddish demographic they so assiduously court. And didn’t XFM take the decision to lay off all daytime DJ’s last year, deeming them surplus to audience requirements? Were the savings made here really diverted into the Glazer debt-management fund?

I have a few problems with XFM, indeed I have problems with any radio station that’s interrupted by adverts every ten minutes (though the glut of adverts from city desperately trying to fill the boo camp are always good for a giggle). But XFM is just so middle of the road and safe, while at the same time thinking it’s totally cutting-edge, that it’s depressing. Even the mighty Dave Haslam seems somehow diminished on the station- his Friday night Weekender show rarely strays from the narrow confines of the playlist into the margins. As for the daytime…you’re never more than two records away from the Pigeon Detectives or others of their sorry ilk.

Artists you won’t hear on XFM: Grinderman, PJ Harvey, Robert Plant and Alison Kraus. Artists you will: The Pigeon Detectives, the Pigeon Detectives, and the Pigeon Detectives. See a pattern there?

Still at least they had the good sense to take Mickey Thomas with them, the only man who makes Paddy Crerand seem fairly neutral and objective when it comes to matters United.

As for the other change – can someone explain to me where the Cash-dash Draw has disappeared to? Now I realise this was a flawed system, but am I alone in finding something endearing in its very tackiness? To me the whole thing, from the ‘Who did he say?’ celebrity bounding onto the turf to be met with indifference at best and booing at worst, to the photo of the giant cheque – ‘Oh, that’s who it was!’ – in the next programme – it spoke of a world that wasn’t all corporate smoothness. Not to mention the smile and the word with the sellers on the way into the ground.

I always thought this was a remnant of United the family club, something other than a soulless machine designed to extract money from us customers. United’s still a family club of course; only the family concerned are the Glazer’s, who seem to add another oddball name to the list of directors every week.

Changes so small most seem hardly to have noticed them, but in their own small way, telling glimpses of what rules our club.

posted by Royton Red @ 4:41 PM