One has to be sorry for Mr Van Gaal, castigated for much of the season for his team’s negative play, just missing out on a Champions League Place which will mean endless Thursday night sorties for the players and fans and now usurped by his former pupil, just hours after triumphing at Wembley.
Yes the ‘special one’ is heading to Manchester’, having been seen packing his bags in London, to sort out the problems in the red half of the city, with or without Ryan Giggs it seems.
Staying on a sporting note of sorts, former Sky Sports pundit Gary Neville has now taken to Twitter to pontificate about Manchester’s choices for Mayor.The former manager of Valencia has taken a dislike to Andy Burnham, probably because he heralds from Liverpool and told his followers that the Leigh MP’s bid for the top job ‘doesn’t feel right at all’ – and that he is ‘better off in Westminster’.
Worse could follow though.According to the Evening News, Neville could, in a cataclysm not unlike Donald Trump’s rise across the Atlantic, become the new Mayor next year, beating Bez and Karen Danczuk to the top spot in the region.
Staying for the moment with politics, About Manchester was sent a press release by Michael Taylor, former Insider editor and Labour candidate who is behind a book, Labour’s Identity Crisis’ with a warning that Labour’s failure to understand English identity cost the party dear and may yet play a role in the 2017 Mayoral election.
Former Shadow Cabinet member Tristram Hunt is also behind the book and we had to laugh at Hunt’s piece in last week’s Spectator Magazine in which he talks about his party’s problems.
“In ‘blue-collar’ Harlow, Labour candidate Suzy Stride was appalled at the snottiness of the campaigners sent to help her. ‘Among our activist base, manual workers were small in number,’ she writes. ‘Increasingly, the Labour party was viewed like middle-class Ryanair passengers having to stomach a couple of hours’ flight with people they shared little in common with — it could be uncomfortable, but it got you where you needed to go.”
Metrolink once again did itself no favours with the eyes of the world on it, well at least Bruce Springsteen fans, when a series of cars on the tracks calamities brought the network to a halt, while the Boss was tuning up at the Etihad leaving fans clamouring to reach the stadium as Manchester once again became gridlocked.
Overheard on a crowded tram stop, About Manchester heard one commuter saying, it must be serious as the notice that services have been suspended on the electronic boards was in capital letters.
Meanwhile this writer was waiting at Victoria Station for well over an hour as a points failure at Queen’s Road, blocked the line East and thanks the tram driver for keeping him informed of what was going on, unlike the yellow coated ticket inspectors who huddled together on the other platform attempting to avoid the glares of commuters.
Hero of the week must surely be the cat who survived for eleven days locked in a car at Manchester Airport without food or water for eleven days.Willow was found inside the vehicle at at Terminal 1 when the owners got back off holiday, before being rushed to Woodcroft Vets in Cheadle for treatment having been reported missing by her owners from her home in Chorley several days earlier.
Her owner, Ellen Fergusson says the eight-year old tabby is “grounded indefinitely” after she sneaked into the car as the holidaymakers were packing.
