Manchester United spoil protests by winning on weird night at Old Trafford

Monday Night Football has prided itself on its cutting-edge innovation ever since Richard Keys and Andy Gray invented football punditry almost 30 years ago to the day. Normally broadcast from a ground-floor studio full of newfangled light-boxes, magic witch portals and other analytical gizmos in Sky’s Isleworth citadel, last night the show went on the road to Old Trafford, all the better to experience first hand the fan protests that would bring the greedy Glazer family to their knees and then have ringside seats for the subsequent slaughter of Manchester United In Crisis by bitter rivals Liverpool.

At least that was the script, but as Mike Tyson once famously sort-of said: “Everyone has a plan till they discover the protest they were hoping for isn’t quite as vociferous as they were expecting, and then the protesting fans’ team wins against all expectations”. What was supposed to be an evening of barely contained rage and fury – motivated by the levels of stagnation to which these American chancers have let the club descend – actually ended up being one of the more euphoric experiences season ticket holders have enjoyed in quite some time.

As protests go, this one was was textbook in its ineffectiveness: an organised “march” from a few pubs the fans would almost certainly have been in anyway, to a football match that nobody involved had any intention of boycotting despite all the pre-match threats of a walkout that would result in an #emptyoldtrafford. You see, that’s the thing about football fans – when push comes to shove most can’t bring themselves to abandon their team in its hour of need. It is on this commendable loyalty that money-hungry leeches like the Glazers depend. Unconcerned by what fans think of them, the