I don’t support Manchester United. Well, I do, that night, a bit, because someone had to support something in the “Sunday Devils” WhatsApp group.
2-0 down to Roma, in the Champions League. Nine games without a win behind them. That’s a disgrace. I’m weighing my words. I typed “disgrace” in the group, my brother-in-law put a thumbs-up, he puts a thumbs-up on everything.
And then the 58th minute, penalty by Bruno Fernandes. Off they go. 3-2 at the end. That’s historic. I’m weighing my words on that one too. Twelve members, eleven messages in two minutes. The twelfth is the brother-in-law, he was on thumbs-up.
The captain had come a long way back. Dropped to the bench after publicly criticising Michael Carrick’s tactical choices, following a 4-1 defeat at Como. Then brought back against Chelsea, lost again. Me, I would have sent three voice messages by now.
After the match, on Amazon Prime, he said: “The club needed that win, the players needed that win. We have been working so hard to get out of this situation all together.” All together. The group is in a good place, you can tell.
He also said that we don’t need to save anyone’s job. I read it twice. I found it reassuring, then worrying, then reassuring. My thermometer did all three in one sentence.
Silly question, but if nobody is saving anybody’s job, who put it at risk?
The captain added that his belief in the manager, the staff and every player in the club hasn’t changed. Neither have I. I pinned the “historic” message above the “disgrace” message, in the same group, eleven minutes apart. Now we take it one game at a time, you know.
It’s true, we checked: BBC Sport.
