Manchester United: a tale of mediocrity and greed finding its own reward

These wall-stones are wondrous. The fates broke them. Pavements were smashed. The work of giants is decaying.

Medieval English poetry loved nothing better than a beautiful ruin: moss-encrusted decay, dying grandeur, the empty hearth. Although, to be fair, medieval England was also cold, damp and prone to violent marauders.

Unsurprising, then, that medieval English poets should get a little tearful at the thought of wet rot and not being able to light the fire. But it seems fair to say they would have found a source of transcendent inspiration in the current, gorgeously decayed iteration of Manchester United: the waving arms, the tortured faces, the uncanny melancholy of those cold white midweek lights.

The day before Atlético Madrid’s brilliantly executed 1-0 win in Manchester, a defeat that casts a shadow not just over the current United season but the next one too, the news broke that Old Trafford could be flattened and rebuilt from the ground up.

This probably makes good economic sense. But there is an aesthetic concern too, because there is an irresistible beauty in the gargoyles, the bowed walls, the mouldering buttresses, the wreckage of two decades of parasitic ownership. Just listen to those howls again, the acoustics that make every sound, every song, every attempt to jolly up these post post-industrial ruins sound like an achingly empty Joy Division bass riff. Perhaps Andy Burnham should slap a blue plaque on this place before they can call the bulldozers in. Because this is also a kind of art.

Not to mention, once the ledgers of overspend and underachievement have been tallied, a kind of natural justice. Rejoice, for Manchester United will win nothing again this year. And it seems that elite sport, or at least