"Stop the clocks", wrote Auden, "Cut off the telephone". OK, it's not as bad as that. Sir Alex Ferguson hasn't died. Only announced his retirement.
It feels like a little death just the same.
My route to Manchester United has been long, circuitous and ambiguous. My Dad took my brother and I to watch City a couple of times when I was a kid. Briefly, I was a City fan. Sometimes I went to watch United with a neighbour. Then, when I went away to school and was old enough to leave the premises on my own, I started going to the nearest town, Barnsley, to watch the Tykes prise their way out of the old Fourth Division and into the Second. Years later I was jumping up and down when Ashley Ward, our lumpen striker, prodded the ball through Bruce Grobelaar's legs at Anfield for an improbable 1-0 victory during Barnsley's only season in the Premiership.
Around that time, 1992 or 3, there were stirrings from Manchester. I was living in London, a disaffected Northener. Alex Ferguson, hanging onto the job by his fingernails, some said, had signed a charismatic but eccentric French midfielder from the previous season's champions, Leeds. With Lee Sharpe flying down one wing and a willowy young man called Ryan Giggs on the other, United were playing the kind of football that prompted Nick Hornby to write a piece in the Guardian entitled "Manchester United's moral right to win the Premiership". The combination of my exile, United's exhilarating football, Eric Cantona's Gallic panache and the comically gruff Glaswegian standing on the touchline orchestrating everything made the lure of Old Trafford irresistible. Then there was the small matter of the Champions League Final in 1999.
When I moved back to Manchester at the end of the decade I might have told you I was a United fan; but it's really more complex than that. In February 1998 Barnsley played United in the FA Cup, and, watching the game on TV in a North London pub, I found myself wanting Barnsley to win, which they did 3.2. And the last game of the 2012/13 season was an odd one, with City needing to win to take the title for the first time in decades; unable to watch it on TV I went to the allotment with my wife, and stood by the car in the closing moments of the game as the clock ran out on City's chances. When Aguero scored the winning goal with seconds remaining I was interested to find that I was gutted; but at the same time thinking "Well we've won it loads, so maybe it's their turn". So perhaps the years have made me into a United fan after all, but not so much of one that I couldn't feel that losing was good for Manchester.
Some words to describe the manager - Gruff. Irascible. Twinkling. Manipulative. Shrewd. Determined. But above all successful. Thank you, Sir Alex, for all the pleasure you've given me. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
PS I think the board will go for Mourhino. But I hope they don't. Mourinho will stay for a couple of years, dazzle, infuriate, fall out with someone and leave an unhappier club behind. Give it to David Moyes.
