Living the Bream

Roll out the barrel of adjectives!  Awesome, monumental, surreal?   Or a touch more street, like dope, sick, epic, banging?  Whatever, I prefer the old-fashioned dog’s bollox, which is of course a noun phrase. 

Having unwisely written on social media that I would do a piece in the improbable event of Grimsby beating Manchester United, I find myself obliged to respond, although it’s difficult.  It’s difficult because the next day’s post-coital satisfaction is almost impossible to convey, having waited, as I had, for 60 years to see this fixture.  To understand this, we have to go all the way back to the 1964-65 season and my mum’s friend’s pad in Harrogate, where I was staying one summer, accompanying my mum on a summer holiday whilst my father enjoyed beer and freedom at the Scarborough Cricket Festival, his annual escape-hatch.  Noting my boredom and the lack of mates to play with (I was 8 at the time) my mum had bought me a football mag, on the cover of which was a full-colour picture of a scarlet Man Utd with the league title trophy.  All the greats were there – Best, Charlton, Law, a toothful Nobby Stiles and company, and up to that moment I’d not really taken on the significance of professional football, preferring to go along with my dad every weekend to watch the works’ side play in the local Saturday league, because he wrote the reports for the company’s weekly magazine, all stapled and type-set, written on clack-clack typewriters by people who just got a kick from doing that sort of noble stuff.  But the sheer gloss of that magazine cover in sleepy Harrogate, and the mysterious contents within changed that holiday for me and subsequently my life, I suppose. 

I started to follow Manchester United before I’d even gone along to try out the local scene at Grimsby’s Blundell Park, and the league champions seemed a team worth supporting.  They were unpredictable, fashionable, maverick and yet authoritative, as if they were a major part of English culture, not merely a major item of its sporting scene.  And whether you buy into this or not, it’s true in the same way that Real Madrid represent a part of Spain’s soil and soul. You cannot subtract them from the overall cultural heft of the place.  Lots of people hate both Man Utd and Real Madrid, but their lives would not be the same without them.  It’s the yin and the yang of life. Without hate you cannot love.  

But as my own bollox dropped and the romance with United wore off, the grubbier attractions of Grimsby Town became my preference – a live fortnightly fix of loss and frustration occasionally brightened by wins and vague optimism. It taught me to keep my expectations low, and to savour the brighter moments – all the more delicious for their rarity. But my one imperishable fantasy, revived every January if we managed to get into the FA Cup 3rd Round, was that we would draw Manchester United at home.  It never happened.  Year upon year my dreams were scuppered until I finally gave up on them.  And then…..voilà – even it was in the Caribou Cup, or whatever it’s called.

I have no wish to poke fun at the present iteration of Man Utd, though I dislike it intensely.  I hope their long-suffering (genuine) supporters appreciated the wit of the Grimsby crowd last night with their ‘Are you Scunthorpe in disguise?’ chant and of course, United are not the only actors in the insufferable pomp and loadsamoney theatre that represents the amoral cesspit of the current Premier League.  But it’s nice to beat one of its teams.  It’s nice to be reminded of the fallibility of Goliaths, and of their hubris too.

Goliaths being fallible

And hubris there was, bucketing down on United’s heads like the apocalyptic storm that hit Cleethorpes in the second half.  At one point, with the score still 2-0, I began to fear that the game would be abandoned – that the gods had decided to forgive United for their timorous and ill-prepared performance, even as Bruno and Mbeumo were beginning to impose some semblance of order and threat.   And ill-prepared it was.  I saw Amorim’s pre-match press conference in Manchester and was struck by the fact that the only time the word ‘Grimsby’ was mentioned was when a journalist asked the Portuguese coach whether or not he intended to rotate the team and give some bench-warmers an early-season run-out.  At no point was Amorim asked his opinion of his next-day opponents, but neither did he offer one.  Did he, with the army of ancillary personnel at his disposal, have Grimsby watched?  We shall never know.  But League Two or not, Grimsby were unbeaten before the game and were playing some good stuff, finally gelling under the interesting and patient stewardship of David Artell, a bruising centre-half in his playing days but a thoughtful tactician and man-manager as a coach. He’s a good bloke too. 

David Artell. Prepares matches and he’s a good bloke

Comparisons might be odious, but the post-match press interviews were a classic study in contrast.  Amorim was speaking in his second language, which is always a bit tricky when you get emotional, but whereas he seemed a man on the verge of a nervous breakdown, a man at the end of his tether, Artell was calm and articulate, the sort of man (as ex-United punter Phil Jones later observed on Sky) that you’d want to play for.  Like Amorim, Artell is a systems man, but he’s flexible, and open to suggestions from his players.  There’s something of the teacher in him, but he’s also paternal, in a gruff, articulate sort of way.  You could say, with some justification, that he had far less to lose, but the sight of him chortling along with his Number 2 Shaun Pearson (also a great bloke) during the penalties whilst to his left Amorim hid in the dug-out like a myxomatoxic rabbit told its own story beautifully.  Grimsby might be League Two, but it’s a happy club with a calm, flexible coach supported by modest, intelligent and successful local owners.  Manchester United, at this present juncture, is a dysfunctional unit whose off-the-field disarray is reflected in the lack of coherence on it. 

Not a Portuguese Man o’ War

I would challenge the view, nevertheless, that they played poorly on Wednesday night, or that they weren’t up for it.  It’s just that Grimsby played better, particularly in the first half, with a passing game and high press that seemed to catch United off guard.  What had they been expecting?  A team of pond-life hoofers?  Any quick glance at their games so far this season would have dispelled that myth.  And with the excellent Evan Khouri and Kieran Green in midfield it beggared belief that Casemiro was not on the pitch to counteract them.  Instead, Amorim fielded two green-gilled young defenders who for all their promise were caught horribly napping for the first goal.  The chaotic second goal might not have stood with VAR around, but the second-half 3-0 finish by the equally inexperienced Cameron Gardner – not even Grimsby’s first-choice striker, would surely have stood had VAR been there as witness.  And folks take the piss out of Harry Maguire but he was United’s best player on the night, aided and abetted by almost no-one, certainly not his manager.

Evan Khouri – Grimsby’s Casemiro

What is there to add?  Perhaps the fact that we’re now unbeaten in our last 10 home games against Man Utd.  They last beat us at the same Blundell Park Ground, in front of the same Main Stand, in 1905.  Grimsby were a top-flight side before the 2nd World War, and were often better than ‘your Man Uniteds’ before their post-war decline resulted in the tinkering of the phrase to the current ‘no disprespect to your Grimsbys’ trope.   Younger readers need reminding of the truths that history can reveal, as long as you’re prepared to go looking. 

We’ve drawn Sheffield Wednesday away – another club passing through a dystopian phase – and we’ll certainly fancy our chances.  But how should I conclude this reflection, in the soft light and delicious after-glow of this extraordinary event?  Well I don’t like to quote myself, but I’ll make an exception here.  I came up with the paragraph below to conclude an article I wrote after Grimsby had won the play-off final in 20222 to return to League Two from the National League.  If you’d like to read the whole piece, it’s here on Liga Fever.

A Curious Communion

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A few years ago, I responded to a question on the platform ‘Quora’ as to which team I supported and why.  I responded as below, and I stick by the thesis. 

“Grimsby Town. Because they’re usually crap. And supporting crap teams (because you were brought up in the town and had no choice) is good for your general outlook on life. It teaches you to be wary of unrealistic or unhealthy expectations. It helps you to appreciate the wins (and the happiness that accompanies them) because they are few and far between, and so you understand that joy is a fleeting thing. It helps you to be an optimist, curiously, because despite the years of barren nothingness, you continue to entertain the fantasy that one day your team may be great, that there will be abundance as they bestride the world like a colossus. The fantasy is enough. You know it won’t happen, but it keeps you going, like a sort of life-carrot. You also belong to a smaller community of sufferers – and you understand each other perfectly. This increases your capacity for empathy.

So I cannot imagine why anyone would wish to support Real Madrid, Bayern or PSG, for example. You would learn very little, and all the above advantages would be absent or reversed.

Support a crap team. You know it makes sense.”

Phil Ball, August 28, 2025