A year ago, along with many reds, in the full grip of my scouse-phobia, I was heartily excoriating our glossily-brochured new signing Michael Owen, and my feelings about Owen contaminated my thinking about the season to come. It wasn't that Owen was scouse-to-the-core that bothered me (or wasn't just that) it was the fact that his signature confirmed the penury of our ambitions under the Glazer regime. So this was our level now was it? Useful to get that learned as Philip Larkin once wrote about something entirely different.
A year on, and with only marginally improved levels of investment into a team that has another year of wear and tear on the clock – and a pivotal midfielder still no nearer to recovery – you'd think that the gloom would be overwhelming. Football being nothing if not irrational, it isn't. In fact quite the reverse, I find myself convinced that, in spite of much of the evidence before my eyes, that we'll win the league. And then I pause for a minute and think, Christ, have I just realised what it's like to support city? Then I run my tongue across my upper-lip and look down at my trousers. The upper-lip is tacheless and the jeans are neither Royton-market circa 86 stone-washed or dubiously stained. Phew, some relief at least.
But back to the season ahead. And the one just gone. Of the Owen signing, I have to admit that he's grown on me. Of course, scoring the winning goal in a derby in the 96th minute will do that for any player, but his general demeanour has been quietly impressive as well. No Big-I-Am-ism (not in the multiple-marriages sense) and no self-promotion, just quietly going about his game. He might lack the explosive pace of old (Number 1 on Owen-cliché Bingo), but he makes up for it with incisive and intelligent runs behind the defence (Number 2). And it can't harm the likes of Macheda and Wellbeck who have many gifts, but great footballing brains aren't obviously among them. I actually felt for him when he was forced off at Wembley, not an emotion I expected to feel this time twelve months ago.
As for the scouse-phobia a counselling programme has encouraged me to realise that I am simply projecting a lot of inner-rage on to the vermin, I mean men from Anfield, and has also encouraged that I take a historical perspective, recognising that without any trade and traffic between the two clubs our history would be radically different. It's definitely working and I have hardly any malice towards the scouse-c^&$% for rolling over against Chelsea when we most needed a favour last season.
And what of the investment made this term? Smalling is a rookie and a gamble. I don't see him displacing Jonny Evans let alone Rio (if he's fit enough or puts down his phone and stops Tweeting for long enough). One for the future, or a makeweight in some player plus cash deal two years from now? We'll see.
As for Javier Hernandez (or el Chichorito as official ordinance is requiring us to refer to him), expectations are slightly different. When the Glazer accounts were laid bare at the start of the year and it became clear just how much was a) being pillaged from the club by the scions of Malcolm themselves and b) disappearing into the chasm of debt and interest repayments, my continued sponsoring of the regime became too big a problem to ignore. Wearing Green and Gold was a start but it wasn't enough; I couldn't renew in clean conscience.
So come a week on Monday, I won't be taking up my seat in the North Stand. I won't be looking left in the hope that the girl with a passing resemblance to Alexa Chung is there. I won't be looking right in the hope that the girl who talks at deafening volume exclusively in football clichés ('Knock it! Knock it!') isn't. And when the final whistle goes I won't be floating from the ground in a state of pure rapture prompted by Chichorito's home debut, as I did after Ronnie shimmered into view against Bolton in 2003. Instead I'll be sat at home, thinking ruefully about the £49 that hasn't just disappeared into the black hole, but that has cost me something more intangible and precious in the process. But more of that another day.
Elsewhere in the squad I suppose we should regard it as a blessing that Vidic has temporarily divorced himself from the adjective 'wantaway', though it might be better if he simply divorced himself from the Mrs instead. And if you read that 'suppose' in the last sentence and detected a hint of equivocation you'd be correct. For me, Vidic is still a shadow of the player who strode onto the Old Trafford turf to face Liverpool two seasons ago. Ridiculous and overblown it might well be to suggest that one game and one player can reduce a reputation to rubble, but it's a feeling that I can't shift, particularly as we see more and more ugly, desperate challenges from him, and fewer clean ones.
This being a post-World Cup season it is of course traditional that a recently (three) lionized individual should be skulking back to Old Trafford in shame lugging the fury and shattered hopes of the nation in his wake. Previous incumbents like Beckham and Ronaldo are this year joined by both Wayne Rooney and Patrice Evra who in their own ways will be on the receiving end of sizeable backlashes. Good. Let it inspire them to further glory in a red shirt and may the small-time nomarks who boo have their fury rammed back down their throats.
I'm going on a bit, so let's wrap it up with a few questions, some of which will be answered this season. Will Giggs and Scholes continue to be able to drink freely from the elixir of youth (and will they let Gary Neville have more than just a couple of drops)? Will Carrick rediscover his sureness of touch and make me look less of a fool for repeatedly insisting that where Fabio went wrong wasn't in not playing Joe Cole, but in not playing Michael Carrick? Will any of Berbatov's legion of critics notice that he does actually run quite a bit? Will the Red Knights fall on their swords – and if they did would they prove to be any more potent than last season's takeover rhetoric?
Oh, and what do you think of this?
