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If there is one thing that Liverpool are good at, it’s producing bitter ex-players who like nothing better than to have a pop at their envied North West neighbours, Manchester United.
There have been some champions of the cause over the years – Phil Thompson, Mark Lawrenson, Alan “they’ll win nothing with kids” Hansen and of course the inimitable Graeme Souness (get well soon, Graeme). But there is a new kid in town. Fanfare please, enter Robbie Fowler.
Nicknamed “God” by the Liverpool faithful – although what kind of god gets fined £32,000 for pretending to sniff cocaine off the white pitch markings as a goal celebration? – Fowler has put his omnipotence into action this week to smite the humble Jim Ratcliffe.
“After reading [that’s a surprise, he can read] that Manchester United are serious about asking the British tax-payer for money to turn Old Trafford into a 100,000-capacity ‘Wembley of the North,’ it’s obvious that silly season is here,” God told The Mirror.
“The suggestion that a football club that generates annual revenues of £700 million should be given a state hand-out, isn’t just madness. It’s also offensive.
“Sir Jim lives in Monaco while the Glazers are based in Florida. Perhaps they haven’t seen that the government has just scrapped the Winter Fuel Allowance for OAPs because the country is skint.
He goes on:
“United’s co-owners have not read the room.
“There would be uproar throughout the country if United are given a single penny, euro or cent of public money to solve a problem that was created by the greed of the Glazers.”
It’s unclear what euros and cents have to do with the situation unless Fowler was sponsored to write the article by a Forex company. He then points out (incorrectly) that “Sir Jim is Britain’s richest man” and that the Glazers are worth £4 billion, before quipping:
“If they don’t want to pay up front, there’s always a mortgage. What should be off the table is the possibility of dipping into the public purse – especially when so many people are once again being left with a choice of eating or heating.”
Would Fowler be writing the same if it was the Fenway Group who were asking for public money to make Anfield the Wembley of the North? If they’d completely regenerate the area, creating jobs, infrastructure and a magnificent public attraction for Northerners, who are tired of paying exorbitant rail prices to schlepp down to London time and again to watch any big match that might be taking place?
Is it not simply sour grapes because Sir Jim thought of it first? Was there any such uproar when the taxpayer provided the entire £1.1 billion to regenerate Wembley?
Fowler’s pathetic claim – that United’s request for funding to help regenerate one of Manchester’s most deprived areas is in some way costing pensioners their fuel allowance – could be the most naive and biased bit of journalism to ever be published by The Mirror. And that, in itself, is something only a god could pull off.
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