Still Punks: Checking in on FC United

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1:06selling on D-Pop. We're taste recognizes taste. List now with no selling fees. Payment processing fees and boosting fees still apply. See website for details. Welcome to no question about that. This time we're talking about FC United I made with George Baker who has been a regular guest on the pod. How's it going George? Yeah great thanks. Great to be back on. Thanks for having me. It was a pleasure. It's non league date coming up. Isn't it an international break in March? Often marketed as a chance to go along and see your local non league club

2:06no United fixtures, but a few really big FC United fixtures. So we're going to talk about the Northern Premier League run in FC United top at the moment with some big games coming up with six seven games to go. One up, four into the playoffs. So we'll talk about state of the club where you're at and maybe tie it back to some themes that Manchester United because I was going to say Laugh and dissatisfaction, but that's been true for 20 something years now, but particularly at the moment. Anyway, George, how's it going? Yeah, great. It was been going really well at FC United this season as you mentioned with top of the league. The only only by one point we're in a very tight title race with hence for town and heaven town. Yeah, it's been a bit of a nice surprise really. I mean, we got a new manager towards and just after this shortly after the start of last season, map easily running from Wellington town. He's done an absolutely fantastic job, not necessarily on a very high budget either. We have one of the lower budgets in the league if anything.

3:07And he's done a remarkable job play. It's a real joy to watch FC at the moment. And yeah, this title running is really exciting. Yeah, so it's a good time at the club. I'm following along from a distance obviously, but it's always been a kind of interesting playsepsy because there's no outside benefactors. You know, had to kind of self-finance the stadium. I mean, there was some government grants, community shares scheme and so on. There's always kind of constrained the club in a sense, right? You talk about the budget there, so can't just spend a lot of it is a lot of the money that we that we make does go on servicing the debt that we owe on the ground. The stadium that brought us part that we built in 2015. And it is it's an excellent facility. You know, it's a 4,900 capacity stadium and we built it from from scratch. They got pointed out before that we were as far as we know, we're the first fully fan-owned club in the world to have built our own stadium from scratch. So it's something we're very proud of, but it didn't come cheap. Yeah, as a result, we don't have the budget that some other non-league clubs close do. It was still managed to do hold our own quite well. And we're

4:12expecting a bumper crowd on Easter Monday as well because we're playing Hensford Town at home. Yeah. And so what about title rivals were sold over 1600 tickets already in advance for that, which is unheard of really for the level seven of the English pyramid to sell so many tickets in advance. So it should be a bumper crowd on that day. Hopefully we'll get those three points. One little bit of then one thing that hasn't gone our way this season is non-league day. There's actually fallen on a gap in our fixtures. We were supposed to be at home to witness town who came up from the Northern Premier League division one last season. But unfortunately, shortly before the season commenced, they went out of business. So as a result, there was only 21 teams in the league this year, which means that one team every week doesn't have a game. Yeah. And typically, that fell on non-league day for us. So what we have done is arranged a friendly with Flickston FC, a rejuvenation of the original, there was the original Flickston FC that went out of business some years ago, but have been revived. And they were the first club the FC and I'd have scored a

5:14goal against one of the four clubs that we played in preseason in our first ever season back in 2005. So we've arranged a friendly against the new Flickston FC. And that's a nice little heart back to the old days. And they're co-managed by two of our former players, one of which is Rodley Giggs. Actually, Ryan's younger brother. Some nice connections there. And we're actually we've actually moved it to Flickston's Valley Road ground. It was supposed to be a broadest part, but we've had a few pitch issues recently, only yesterday. For the sixth time this season, our home game against Stockton Town was postponed due to bad weather and there's the sixth time that very fixture has been postponed. I think only one other, one or two others have been postponed due to bad weather and broadest part, but that Stockton Town game just does not want to go ahead for whatever reason. So we've decided to move our non league day friendly to the away ground, but it'll be a good way for a lot of our older fans to reminisce about the early days of FC. Should be a nice little rest as well for the players before very strong running.

6:16Yeah, all right, so I want to get on to this running and how it's been this season, I suppose, Ryan won't be turning up at that friendly this weekend to support his brother. I don't know, have they made up yet? Got who knows? Should I always jammer in that family, right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, all right, so it's been a season, as you mentioned, of relative success. I think FC kind of found a home in the Northern Premier League. It seems to have been the sort of level. This is level seven or step three of the non league pyramids promotion would... What's he called the division above? Remind me. National League North. National League North, and which leads into the National League, of course, which is the one just below the NFL years. We've spent four years in the National League North from 2015 to 2019. A stockpile county were in it, for all those four years. It was quite a bit of a rivalry formed at the time, but they have very much left us in the dust. It's just then, but there was

7:18challenging time in the National League North, and it'll be challenging if we do manage to go up. It'll be a challenging task to stay in it and hold our own, because it's not easy for... Like anywhere else in the football period, it's not easy for promoted clubs in the amount of money that's in non league nowadays, but it's a challenge that we're relishing, that we certainly believe that we belong in the National League set up, because we're still averaging in the top two, top three of the average crowds in the Northern Premier League, so we can more than hold our own in the National League, and National League North attendance-wise, at least. So the season built on the back of pretty strong defensive records, spread the goals around, Adam LaFondre. People may, well, remember that name, because he played at Redding, and I think he was a bit of a journeyman, went to Australia and the Indian Premier League and stuff like that, so who'd been the standout? I mean, Adam's one name, but some others in there? Yeah, we have, and LaFondre has been terrific last two seasons, he's played for us. He came from,

8:19he came from Hebs, actually, the last club he played for before us was Hebs. So he was a regular in the team when they were in the Scotch Premier League, so it was quite a scoop for him to come and play for us, and yeah, he's terrific up front for us. There's other players such as Jay Fitzmire, and he's been terrific on the wing, he's united this season. We've also got Andrey Wisdom, who is a familiar name in the Premier League. He played quite a few games at Liverpool, he was at Derby County for a long time as well, so we've got two very experienced season pros in the Scotch and in the former Wisdom and LaFondre alongside a lot of young talent as well. But yeah, Jay Fitzmire has really been a standout for us, and we've had, you know, there's Michael Donahue who has been with us for a good few years now, and he actually took a sabbatical from non-lead football for a while, but came back and it was absolutely stormed, it has not had a bad game at all this season. We've had a great goalkeeper in the forward, Dan Atherton, who's injured at the moment, so we've got a young lad from Legion 8, actually,

9:20and we've managed to loan a goalkeeper from Legion 8 to all clubs to fill in for the injured Dan Atherton, who's playing in the ball league as well for Michael Richards at the club. Right. A bit of an example of modern football, you wouldn't associate with FC and I had, but it seems to work for him to be fair. Keeps in fresh and some extra training if you like. I mean, the whole squad have been absolutely brilliant. The bench is looking strong and good as well every time. Sometimes we would only have three or four subs for a game due to fitness and injury issues, but this season with that's not been too much of a problem. Yeah, the whole squad is a terrific unit with some season pros and some young lad as well. Tell us about the manager, then you said, yeah, he's been there a couple of years, seems to have done a really good job. What's his background? So, yeah, Mark Beasley, we've gone in from Barnes and Town. He's a terrific manager. It does the job and goes home counterfeller. Our previous manager, Neil Reynolds, was a man who, shall we say, loved the camera and was very up there when we won a match,

10:23but hung back a bit when the things were going to well, no bitterness towards Neil Reynolds, he was with us for six years and it was time for him to go in the end, but he did take on the FC and I job back in 2018 when not a lot of people would have done. He deserves a lot of credit for that, there's a reddo. But yeah, Beasley personality wise is the complete opposite, just very much focused on the team. It gives a pretty much interview when he asks, a post-match interview when he has to, but it doesn't really get involved in anything else. There's only focused on the playing side. He works for the Robby Fowler Academy as well. His full-time job is as a football coach. So, when he's not at FC, he's coaching younger, so his life is football. It's worked out brilliantly, like he's like to be top of the league with an average budget. It just goes to show how much he's rejuvenated the squad. So, coming to the running then, it's all wrapped up inside a month, isn't it? It ends before the end of April, the Northern Premier League season, and then there's

11:25obviously the playoffs. How do you see this running going feeling confident? It's a really tight, it's a three-way race for the title. I'm in gaming hand over heaven, I think, if I remember correctly, but it'll be wrapped up pretty soon. Feeling confident about winning the title this year? Yeah, I am actually. A few weeks ago, it was looking like playoffs was the likely scenario, because we slipped up with a couple of results, but we've been top of the farm table for as long as I can remember now. We've had a really good run of farm, and then we say, yeah, we've got a game in hand over heaven, but we're level on games with Hensford who are only one point behind us. So, that game against the Monaster Monday is huge. It's one of the biggest games we've had in the league for years. The last game we played before COVID was probably the largest game I can think of. We were away at South Shields when they were top and we were second, and we were, I think, every game in the football league and the Premier League had been postponed that weekend because of COVID,

12:29and only non-league was going ahead. I think our away game against South Shields was the second largest attended game in Europe that Saturday, because everywhere in Europe had postponed their games, and we lost to South Shields. It didn't matter in the end, because the season was curtailed, and our level was the highest level where all the results were expunged, so it didn't really matter. But since then, we've not had a first versus second or a first versus third that's as so close to the end of the season and so impone as this game against Hensford on Easter Monday. It's going to be a huge occasion as I say, we've sold, but a lot of tickets in advance already. I'm confident we can do it because our running is a lot stronger coming up than Heaven and Hensford. Hensford and Heaven have on paper much weaker teams, however, and we've got quite a few teams. We've still got stopped and to play over fifth. We've got Hensford, obviously, we were third, a lot of two others, but we seem to do better against the better teams. It's one of the things that Erksis about FC United is we tend to get results against the better teams, and then when one of the weaker teams

13:33comes round, we can't seem to do a thing. There's been a bit more consistency in this season with that, but we do seem still even in a season where the top of the league to be doing better against the teams around us than perhaps at the bottom of the table. So with that in mind, and the fact that we seem to play better against the better teams, I'm confident we can actually go all the way here. Yeah, and if it doesn't happen, the playoff system is similar to the football league, so there's four teams make into the playoff. There's a semi-final and a final kind of structure. Yeah, but it's different to the football league in the sense that there's only one leg in the playoff. So the second team play fifth, third by fourth, similar to the football league in that regard, but the semi-final is at the home ground of the high-place team. So if you finish second or third, you'll get the home playoff tie. And then the final is at the home ground of the high-place team in the final. So you really want to finish second, basically, because that means you'll get both playoff ties at home if you make it through the semi-final. And so yeah, there's a big advantage to

14:36finishing as high up the league as you can. Yeah, and obviously the big one on Monday then, let's talk about Easter Monday. Let's talk about that one. And so it's first, the third, it's basically a title playoff sort of. It could be, it could be in the way. Essentially, yeah, I say it's the biggest game we've had in the league for many, many years. And it's one that we really, you know, whoever wins that tie has the upper hand with the title race, I would say. There are everyone's playing on Good Friday as well. And obviously, the rest of the league will be playing this Saturday when we've got our friendly on-on-league day away at Flickston. So there's two games before that, before the Easter Monday, billing against Hensford Town. So we've got Whitby Town away on the Good Fridays. This should be loads of us at that. Obviously, Whitby or Easter Weekend will be a good place to go. Oh, yeah. Harloss, lucky girl. See, Sid and all of that. Exactly, yeah. It's always the first fixture. A lot of myself and my mates look for when it comes out, Whitby Town away, because they've always been, they've been in the Northern

15:39Premier League for as long as we can remember. So that'll be a good occasion and hopefully we can obviously get a result there. One thing about the reverse fixture when we, when we played at Hensford, it actually went semi-viral on social media because it had something around 3,900. Just shy of 4,000 people were at the reverse fixture and we took over 600 away fans. The Hensford Town is, Hensford Town's ground is pretty state-of-the-art. They've had quite a bit of investment lately and they have electronic advertising bars, which is almost unheard of, outside the National League. And it just, a lot of people were clipping clips from that game and putting them on social media going, this is level 7 with the English Paul Pyramid. How incredible is this 3,500, 4,000 people in a state-of-the-art stadium like this and it was just, it really does hit home what an obsession. Football is in England and how the interest in non-league, particularly as just spiked in the last five to 10 years, it really has, I think, a lot of people all over the country, particularly in the north of England, have discovered the joys

16:44of non-league football and how much better the experience is here than it is at the top level for the match going fan. America leads the world in medicine development. It matters. We get new medicines first, nearly three years faster. Five million Americans go to work because we make medicines here at home and not relying on other countries keeps us safe. But China is racing to overtake us. Will we let them or will we choose to stay ahead? When America leads, America cures. Let's tell Washington to keep us in the lead. Learn how at americacures.com, pay for by pharma. Protein is now at Starbucks and it's never tasted so good. You can add protein, cold foam to your favorite drink or try one of our new protein lattes or matcha. Try it today at Starbucks.

18:07Obviously, the United States was born of the commercialisation of football and the glazer takeover and dissatisfaction with that. That has just never gone away. Obviously, in the last 10 years, Manchester United haven't been as successful as they once were and the pilot debt is still there, but particularly in the last two since Ratcliffe came into the club and has attempted to turn around the finances. The much of that has been put on the fans. So fans moved from their seats to replace them with VIP fans. I just read a piece I think in the Guardian yesterday about a family who's held their seat for 80 years. Relatives of the former player and they've been moved. Ticket prices have risen sharply. Five percent for season ticket holders, but very sharply for non-season ticket holders. The United States still stands in the face of this hyper commercialisation of Premier League football. It just seems to be one thing after

19:08another with Ineos and Jim Ratcliffe. We were obviously as pleased as anybody when we heard that the glazers were willing to sell at least a stake of United to somebody else. We welcomed it. We cautious optimism. I think that was the wording that we used in a statement when Ineos got involved. That hope and optimism was very much drained because, as you say, they've just gone after the fans to make money. They've gone after the people at the bottom. It was the lower paid staff that were made redundant from just United. It was the fans who have had to either be moved or have had ticket prices raised in inexplicable levels. Last season, obviously raising every ticket to 66 pounds. Only halfway through the season, I believe as well. It's just style bulk really. As you mentioned, that story about fans getting moved to make way for even more corporate seating, as if the South stand to all traffic doesn't already have in North corporate seats in it and corporate boxes they need more now. It's always a

20:10significant billion M mentality of Jim Ratcliffe. It's the people at the bottom who have to suffer for the men at the top to succeed. At the end of the day, he might be can crow all he likes about being a local ad from Manchester and a United fan, but you don't get to become a billionaire without considering money and making money during your only priority. That's what he'll want. It doesn't matter that he's in his 70s. It doesn't matter that he's a local ad or a fan. Fact is he'll want a return on his investment. That's all he cares about. The only way to do that is to exploit the ever loyal fan base of a company that's considered to have the most fans in the world and he will continue to do that. Yeah, I mean, that's certainly been the case. I spent a long time in strategy jobs and it's time you venture capsules. I kind of know that world and Sir Jim Sir Jim. I mean, that says it all anyway, doesn't it? The offshore billionaire and all of that who hates immigrants. Hold on the story. That one. But so I like if I was in a job going,

21:13how do I turn this organization around? You'd probably start thinking about similar levers. Like how can you get new commercial partners? Well, they don't want to join if the team is crap. Can you squeeze money out of more broadcasters? No, that's fixed. Can you sell more shirts, sponsorship? That's kind of fixed as well. So the lever you end up pulling is ticket prices. But as you say it, it fully screws over ordinary fans. The funny for a few years, I think it was three seasons. I had a seat in a south stand. This was in the 90s, right? So it was a very different experience. It was even back then, not a great atmosphere in those seats. I mean, people weren't getting up and singing for 90 minutes. But it was good for abusing the away team dug out. That was the good benefit. But that seat right now would be one of these ultra premium padded seats they're putting in 400 quid of ticket, including some beer and a burger or whatever you get. And it certainly, like you know, obviously, this is a podcast about FC United. So I don't want to

22:16drone on about this too much. But with the new stadium that may or may not happen. Collette Roach was seen seemingly the COO United or CEO of the stadium development corporation. Seems very confident. The pathways to funding that are quite narrow. And one of them will involve things like personal seat licenses, which is where you pay a amount of money to have the right to pay an extraordinarily large amount of money to get the ticket. It's come from American sports. And it's just like that hyper commercialization, that Americanization of the whole experience seems like it's inevitable at United. And FC United there still reasonable ticket prices. I think there's even pay what you can afford, isn't there? Well, we're fully enough. We've voted to actually scrap the pay what you can afford skiing for the first time. Oh, there you go. You're going down the same route, screwing over the fence. It's sold out completely. Now, one thing is it was put to it, but it was put to it about that one. It's something we've known on time to pay what we can afford. But it always had a minimum.

23:17You know, if you couldn't afford the minimum, then you could contact the club and you know, they could figure out a payment plan for it. But unfortunately, like the club of clubs in decent hands at the moment, we've elected a board with decent financial backgrounds in finance and business because the reality is the club in order to compete successfully, it does need to turn over a certain amount of money in order to keep going. But as long as we remain 100% fan-owned and the fans are making the big decisions that the board recommend, then the club keeps its principles intact as far as I'm concerned. You know, it's that 100% fan ownership is the deal breaker. And it's up to us whether we want to raise ticket prices all lower than raised bar prices all lower than everything else. It's entirely up to the fans and that's the beauty of FC United. But yes, sadly, we have had to scrap the pay what you can afford, scheme. But I believe it'll be between 250 and 300 pounds for an adult season ticket, an adult truck, an adult truck, and so in our broader spark for FC United, this is for the coming

24:18season. And that's going to stay that way whether we get promoted or not. So we're not going to suddenly go get promoted and go, oh, well, we're going to put it up even further. That's not going to happen. So yeah, the pay what you can afford scheme was pretty groundbreaking and it works for a long time. But at the same time, we discovered that we would actually have to encourage fans to put an optional donation on top of the minimum season ticket price as part of the pay what you can afford scheme and the club is relying a bit too much on a handful of supporters who happen to be a bit wealthy than others. So in order to rely on those donations, it wasn't really sustainable. So the fans voted in favor of a new season ticket structure, but it's still very affordable football for the level we would play at. Yeah, well, that's the point. It's a club that's based on transparency and and financial and fan involvement. And when there was six, seven years ago, some controversy, that was what the controversy was about, wasn't it? It was like there was some opaque level of decision making and and getting back to first principles was

25:22important. And if fans vote to increase ticket prices, then fans have voted to increase ticket prices. And it's not it's not racially for the glazers in tamper or wherever their offices are reinforcing it on on their people who are then priced out of going to watch their team. Yeah, exactly. It's it's the fans are in truck being charged. And if we we want to exploit ourselves, we will do. And it's yeah, it's got a case of exploitation. It's a case of them. The board are selling the same to us. You know, we need to raise a certain amount of money each year to remain sustainable. So these are the recommended like, and they don't even make recommendations. They're not even allowed to do that anymore. We voted against the board recommending which way you vote on a resolution so that the fans can make up their own mind about things. And you know, we did a big fan survey recently about what we what things that we were going to compromise on. So, you know, we may see stands sponsorship. Eventually, we may see ground sponsorship. We won't be seeing shirts sponsorship. That's something that's very sacred to us in Ireland even today. And even with our financial struggle, we're still voting

26:25against having a shirt sponsor because that's been the thing from day one. We've not had a shirt sponsor on the front of the shirt. And that will remain so. You know, again, it's all about what the fans want. And if the fans believe that we can have a bit of leeway here in there, if those folks pass, then those folks pass. And that's democracy. Very true. And there are a few fan-owned clubs around the country, not many bigger than FC United. I'm obviously Wimbledon have done pretty well. I can't actually remember if they're fully fan-owned still. Not anymore. No, I believe they're at about 80%. They had to sell a stake in order to fund the new PLA. And so we're one of the larger. I think we are the largest 100% fan-owned club into by terms of members in England still. Yeah. And I mean, it's always one of those big decisions. And I think sticking to the principles of sort of punk football principles that are red rebels or whatever we want to call them is important. I mean, we had Swansea, we were fan-owned for a while and then they sold out literally sold to, I think, an American

27:30businessman. And it kind of went wrong from there. And there's probably some regrets there. We've wrecks them fan-owned at the moment. But at one point, they probably won't be complaining at the moment because they've got Hollywood backers and all of that. Well, I've even said like, even with Wraxham, you know, they were fan-owned for many years until the Hollywood Consortium came along. But even that, the success of Reynolds and MacLenie and what they've turned Wraxham into, in some ways, is a success for fan ownership because it was the fans who voted to sell the club to that resortium. And it was overwhelming. It was something like 90 or 95, 96% perhaps even higher. So it was, again, it was the fans chose to no longer be fan-owned. So you can't even know it's from our perspective, it's disappointing that less and less clubs have stuck with the fan ownership room. It's a different context because obviously we've left a club that were, or say, we physically left Manchester United in the sense that we watch FC United and Manchester now, we're all still

28:31Manchester United fans. We saw Manchester United win everything. We saw, but it came at the cost of the match day experience for us and the, you know, the soul of Manchester United and everything whereas for fans of other clubs who haven't seen that success, that they want to remain competitive. Rexham was stuck in the National League in tier five. So, you know, over a decade, I believe, before the Hollywood Consortium came along. So it's understandable that their fans decided to vote the way they did, but because they have the option to vote the way they did. And it was, that means that the fans were in control of their destiny. The fans who kept Rexham afloat for all those years deserve the most credit because, you know, that support was just that ran the club, kept that club afloat and it was eventually bought and now they're pushing to get into the Premier League. So it's all because all thanks to the fans taking over Rexham. And that's just one example. You know, it just goes to show how important fan bases are to football clubs and how in more cases they should be in charge of their own destiny.

29:32Yeah, I think so. Nothing that that's the overriding story that comes out of FC United, isn't it? It's about, you know, what fans need and what fans want. We're very quick in the country to say, hey, these are community institutions. We now have an independent regulator, which is based on that principle that these are community institutions, not just businesses, but finance seems to dictate more than anything that that is not true. Certainly in the Premier League, in the championship, I mean, every single club is losing money. So they all need financial benefactors and the further you go down the pyramid, we're seeing in recent years how much money does make a difference. You know, we get a bit of an investment. It's all for Rexham obvious examples and you can kind of escape out of it, but at a cost maybe of something. And FC United have stuck to the principles that were the formation of the club and that kind of feels important,

30:33even even if that means that, you know, the club is stuck around tier six, tier seven, and doesn't end up in the football league. Maybe that doesn't matter. No, I mean, that's it. I mean, the club will go as far as the fans want it to go. You know, that's always been a mantra of FC United. It's up to us like how much if there's enough of us who want us to invest more in the playing squad, the fans can put a resolution forward that has the backing of five or so other members. And if enough fans, if enough members of FC United agree with that, they'll vote that resolution through and the board will be forced to divert more funds towards the playing squad. However, the reality of the situation is, and most FC United fans recognise that there has to be a balance because we had to have, we still owe that debt on the stadium and everything else. We have seen an uptick in the United fans' dissolution by the Glazers and Ineos coming over to FC in the last couple of years. I'm seeing more and more testimonies on social media saying that, you know, I was optimistic about Jim Ratcliffe, but he's proved himself to be as bad as the Glazers,

31:39and I'm going to give FC United a go. And so many people come back and say that was terrific, you know, I mean, we've been going very, since the start, I've had a lot of my friends in like, we stand just to the side of where the noise comes from behind the goal in the St Mary's road, and sometimes we think to ourselves, oh, the atmosphere was so much better back in the day, and it's not as good now. But then someone will come along for the first time to that very gain, and you'll be chatting to them, or you'll see them on social media a day or two, and they'll say, the atmosphere was incredible. I didn't expect it to be anywhere near that good, and it's really great, and I'm going to come back and FC United really is the future and all this. And it just goes to show how special it is what we've got. You know, it may not be, the first few seasons of FC United were insane. You know, we were getting averages of 3000 in the Northwest Counties League, and we were taking 1500 away to all these little towns in the Northwest of England, and never even seen a football following before. It was absolutely insane, but that was never going to last. That was never, it was always that initial interest that people were going along to see. And it was always going to be difficult to maintain that,

32:43but we still have something really special. And like, to the point where you'll get fans of United coming along, you'll get, obviously United play a lot on Sundays now. So you get a lot of, when they're home the same weekend as FC, there's a lot of, there's a lot more supporters branches from international free, international supporters branches coming to games. So yeah, you know, supporters branches from elsewhere in Britain coming to games Britain and Ireland. It's great to see because I think, obviously, the combination of non-league becoming more popular, the top flight becoming even more distant from the, the everyday fan. FC United is there, strong Manchester United fans fed up with all of that, and you don't have to give up entirely on Manchester United. It doesn't say we're all still United fans. We're all still, you know, the club still plays in red, white and black. FC United Manchester is a rejummeling of Manchester United. FC, that's basically, you know, it's very much, it's got a united spirit to it, and it's evident everywhere you go in the ground as well. And so it'll always be there, and it'll always stay fun-owned and controlled by us. Again, I think that's really important because you have so many

33:47people at the top of football throughout the world who have forgotten about the roots of football, and it's, and we will have the World Cup this summer in America, it's entirely commercialised, and well, I'm politicised, sadly, just reading this morning, the fans from six countries have to pay a $15,000 bond just to get into the country to watch their team. Awesome. Gianni and Fantino, and Fantino, I know Dow has lined his pockets through this process. The Super League may have broken down in Europe, but the Champions League is the Super League in name only, and the Premier League, every what everyone is putting prices up because they're all chasing the same revenue, and it's an arms race to see you can make the most revenue to get the best players, well, half the league's owned by private Xeo-American owners now, so I think the horse is bolted. And I feel like, you know, the corruption of the top level of football is not, they're not even trying to hide it now. Like, Infantino, there's always Chip Trump and everything, and it's just how

34:52does that resonate with the average fan? You know, we can all see giving peace prize award, giving peace awards to men, bombing countries, and those countries are playing in the World Cup. That that man is hosting, and the fans aren't allowed to come, and the team may even have to fully withdraw, but FIFA is still allowing the US to host the World Cup, and that's just one example of how dystopian and hellish things have got with the modern game, because I mean, not unique in some quarters of United fan culture in that I actually love international football, and I love the World Cup, but I'm feeling like, if I don't boycott it, am I betraying my own principles at this point? I don't want to boycott it. It's the World Cup. I shouldn't have to do anything like that. I shouldn't have to have a moral dilemma as to whether or not to watch a football match, even on TV, but I'm having this now. Well, you're welcome to come Seattle. It's it's a liberal bubble in there, the heart of all this. Yeah, Seattle and Portlanders, exceptions, I'm sure, yeah, from the Pacific Northwest. See, I moved here about five years ago

35:54for reasons, and I went to a few MLS games, hated it. Didn't like the atmosphere, it was weird, didn't understand. It wasn't like English football at all, and American sports is weird anyway, and started going to our local non-lead club, which is the fifth tier of American sports, but I suspect a very similar kind of standards. Most of the players are semi pro or ex-university, or university players coming out, hoping to be on a pathway to something bigger. There's a few of you who've made it into the MLS, not that many. There's a couple of thousand fans go. It's a great atmosphere. I can have a beer, stand, have a beer, watch the game, nice atmosphere, enjoy that. Much more, feels more real. Yeah, and that's happening more across, not just you saying those reminded me, it's not just happening in England, that dissolution, and it's happening all over the world. Things all the time, online about clubs in Spain, in France, in the USA, and in Germany as well, where there's clubs way down the pyramid that

37:01are getting new support out of nowhere. It's great to see, because when you see things like, when you see things just as openly corrupt, as I was mentioning earlier, but even closer to home in England, you look at what the punishment Chelsea got for recently, for all the cheating that they did, and we have to call it cheating. It was cheating, yeah. Yeah, and like for seven years, there were all these illicit payments, and how many trophies did they win within 2011 and 2018, lows, and 10.75 million, what's that to Chelsea? You don't even blink about it. They didn't pay it off. That's coming out of the Abramovich fund, they're not even clear-length. Clear-length owners, $185 billion worth of assets under management, Chelsea obviously were bought for £2 billion, I have plenty of revenue, and it's coming out of the Abramovich fund, which he won't release anyway. If that whole story doesn't talk about the corruption in football, nothing can, yeah. That was utterly shocking. What worries me more about that as well, is that corruption will seep down into a lot of leagues as well, because they'll see that

38:06the punishments for this sort of thing is minimal, and it encourages clubs at lower levels to do things outside of what's deemed acceptable. It's an open secret, even at non-league, that there are players being paid on top of their salaries. There are clubs that, because there's so much investment, even in non-league now, we've seen how clubs like Mackelsfield obviously there are Phoenix clubs, so perhaps you could argue they belong in the top of non-league if they're going to be in it, but they've shot up the leagues since they reformed, got very in the league below us as well. There's clubs like Heaven who've got very small followings, but they're competing in a title race with us. You wonder how many other clubs there are like this, who don't seem to get many fans, but seem to shoot up the leagues in non-league, and then they're declined, is rapid, blight Spartans in the northeast. There's another example,

39:06a very fine traditional club with a long history of, you know, cut runs and everything like that. I think they're on for their third successive relegation this season, you know, if something like that. So it's happening so often, it needs to be called out, you know, that the administrators at this level, whether it be the Northern Premier League, the National League, the Southern, the Estonian leagues, they know that these things are going on and they need to stamp it out because it's chasing, and there's no other way to say it. Yeah, well, the football regulator, as far as I can tell, in terms of like how the job postings are going, will be not hugely funded. So we'll see whether they can actually clean up the game. It may take a while, I suspect. I mean, they certainly won't be funded to the level of taking on the big boys who are happy to hire an army of lawyers to fight their case on technicalities as we've seen over and over again with City and Lester and Chelsea getting a slap on the wrist for, you know, he has any, the thing that annoyed me about that

40:10is not that, you know, I see Chelsea as a rival or anything like that, that was, it was so corrupt what happened. I mean, it was 47 million pounds worth of payments to 36 players, agents who weren't registered off-book offshore companies, secret payments to get players, deals done that weren't on the books, just as corrupt and as much as you as possible. And it was just kind of pushed through in a secret deal done months ago. It wasn't even an open hearing. And I guess the justification was hey, they copped to it. But if I fest to a murder, I'm still going to prison, you know, and I'm going to go, hey, don't do that again, you know, probably, basically. Yeah, but thank you for, thank you for confessing. Yeah, if we guilty get a more lenient sentence, but, you know, a, that was no signifying in a suspended transfer ban. It's nothing. It's absolutely nothing to Chelsea. Yeah. So, and it just encourages, it's that perfect model that we're, I believe, city of a pro, the city of adopted it, you know, have a bottomless pit of money by,

41:12buy your way to success and when you get cold out on it, you said money to buy the best lawyers in the world and get yourselves off the charges. And you've got away with it. It's the perfect system. If you've any, it all comes down to having as much money as you can and top like football really is going more and more in the direction of who's got the most money. It's a story. It's something we've been saying for 30, 40 years now, but it's just so blatant and so out there, but it's it. Well, when I get annoyed about that, when I get depressed about that, I just remember how lucky we are to have FC United Manchester because that is literally the antidote to that. It is. And it exists for every Manchester United. And if you fed up with it, there's a whole few FC United. Very good. Well, on non-lead day, no home lead fixture, but the way one at Flickston, if United fans, Manchester United fans have nothing to do, go along, enjoy the game, and there's six games to Monday as well. Easter Monday, yeah. Big game and championship

42:12title decider. Basically, good luck with the run in and I'll be watching fingers crossed for getting that one promotion place. And if not, the playoffs will be fun as well. George, it's really a real pleasure to have you back on. I default you on socials. And when you're not talking about FC United, you're winding up politicians and other people with all that's going on in the world. So, you know, an antidote on the football side of things and in life as well. Yeah. Bit of pleasure. Thanks very much, right? Thanks a lot. Listeners, viewers, if you are watching this, you can catch us all on the audio apps as I'm sure you know patreon.com.com will such an NQAT party if you want to get our extra show. I think we'll be talking about the women's team, big champions league game. Later today as we're recording. George, thanks a lot. Bye now. Cheers.

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