Filed under: Manchester United, Media, Football
The BBC's recent dramatisation of the Munich air disaster wasn't perfect. There was too much direction in the dialogue. ("It's alright for you, you're Duncan Edwards," Duncan Edwards was told on our first sighting of Duncan Edwards.) Bobby Charlton's haymaker-swinging breakdown in the Rechts der Isar hospital - "There's been a crash and you ask me if I'm alright?" - was straight out of the why-I-oughta school of scriptwriting. Dougray Scott characterised Matt Busby as a strange mix of Robert de Niro and Arthur Daley, while the heroic Jimmy Murphy was rendered in moments of high emotion as Doctor Who in full boggle-eyed dude-where's-my-tardis mode.But it was a damn fine piece of television all the same. As Old Trafford mourned in grim 1950s beige, the humanity shone through. The nation wept. Money was sent to the club for the bereaved families. Petty rivalries were set aside as Murphy desperately tried to keep United afloat - Liverpool offered to send players. Charlton and Busby battled furiously with their demons, ending the season at Wembley for the FA Cup final, an embroidered phoenix rising from the flames on United's shirts as they went out to face Bolton Wanderers. A painful story we all know backwards, but one which benefitted immeasurably from having some flesh put on the bone, at least for the generations - most of us now - who weren't there at the time.
The film having piqued the memory, the 1958 FA Cup final sprung to mind at the weekend, when the media went into full meltdown mode over a couple of refereeing blunders at Stamford Bridge and the Emirates. The Munich film ended with United walking out into the light that day at Wembley. This would be no bittersweet fairytale, though: United were destined to lose the final 2-0, Nat Lofthouse scoring twice. Infamously, Lofthouse's second goal was an egregious disgrace, not only by the standards of today, but by the standards of the time: he shoulder-charged United keeper Harry Gregg into the net, ball and all as Gregg was in the process of plucking a cross from the sky, the goal being allowed to stand. Gregg required lengthy treatment before the game could restart with, outrageously, a kick-off.
So how did the papers of the day report this? "Lofthouse worthily leads Bolton to easy victory", announced the Manchester Guardian. "Manchester United, having achieved the well-night unbelievable performance of fervour and inspiration almost without parallel in football, had their shortcomings ruthlessly exposed by Bolton," they reported. Only a couple of lines were given over to the second goal. "The hapless Gregg could only push the ball up and, as he tried to catch it, he and the ball were unceremoniously bundled into the net."
The Observer was a bit more sceptical. Their star columnist Danny Blanchflower, of Spurs, "thought it was a foul", but said no more of the incident, also adding that "Bolton won and deserved to" and "it wasn't United's day, but perhaps I expected too much of them". Meanwhile the paper's main report sat on the fence: "No doubt the fairness of the charge was difficult to assess, but Lofthouse seemed to be going for the ball rather than the goalkeeper, and to be entitled to do so as both tried to reach it first." Meanwhile the British Pathe newsreel blithely announced that "the goal was fair enough".
United, with life in tragic perspective, didn't bother complaining. On the touchline, Busby sat watching events unfold stoically. To think Jose Mourinho looks likely to become the club's next boss.
But Lofthouse's goal: imagine if that happened today! There would be questions in the House. Compare and contrast to the whining - and the media are more at fault here than the managers, who are paid by their clubs to fight their corner whatever's happened - over a few incorrect refereeing decisions this weekend.
First, the two Chelsea goals at Stamford Bridge - the second offside, the first not over the line. It's clear that both decisions were wrong. But if defenders repeatedly leave people unmarked in the box, and fail to clear the ball during elongated melees, or goalkeepers keep letting the ball between their legs and allowing nine-tenths of it to cross the line before bothering to deal with the situation, sometimes decisions are going to go against you. You're going to concede goals doing this. The press went big on pictures showing the ball nearly crossing the line. It was one of the biggest refereeing errors of the season, they cried. Nary a mention that Chelsea were worthy victors of the game anyway. Or that, if legitimacy for Frank Lampard's goal was a matter of millimetres, then surely it was one of the smallest referring errors of the season?
Meanwhile at the Emirates, Manchester United should certainly have had a penalty when Gael Clichy raked his studs down the back of Michael Owen's leg as Arsenal finally won a game at home. "We never get decisions in the big games," whelped Sir Alex Ferguson, studiously ignoring, with no apparent irony, Nemanja Vidic's full-length diving fingertip save to deny Robin van Persie a goalscoring chance earlier in the game. Should Vidic - who should have been sent off - deny Chelsea a win at Old Trafford this coming weekend with a majestic interception, tackle or header in the dying seconds, and effectively secure the title for United, it could safely be said that Ferguson's side would be the beneficiaries of a decision in a big game. You can't blame Ferguson for his one-eyed analysis - he's looking out for his own team, it's a football manager's job to display signs of paranoid myopia - but the assorted journalists could have at least pulled him up on it.
So all these decisions were wrong, but at what cost? Because for once, the cliché that what goes round, comes round seems to be working out. Chelsea were the beneficiaries of a win they might not have otherwise had, but then United could easily be going into the title decider without their most important defender. The two decisions that benefitted Chelsea were also marginal ones: this wasn't Lampard's ghost goal for England against Germany last summer, or Jeff Astle scoring for West Brom against Leeds in 1971. And they were certainly less outrageously wrong than the one which saw Gary Neville stay on the pitch at the Hawthorns earlier in the season, helping United to a win they would surely never have otherwise got.
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