When we were drawn against Man Utd in the Fourth Round of the Cup I initially thought that a televised Friday night slot and close to ten thousand tickets being available to Boro fans would make it easy for me to continue my run that stretches back to the Extra Preliminary Round back in August of having attended a game in each round of this season’s competition.
The fixture, however, caught the imagination on Teesside and it sold out long before sales reached recent season card holders like Harry and myself. Fortunately, my friend Paul saved the day with a couple of corporate hospitality tickets that he had going spare at work. Cheers, mate!
I picked Harry up when he finished school for the day and set off for a trip that on a good run would take no more than a couple of hours. With the match traffic and the usual M62 Friday tea-time congestion it ended up taking around three and a half hours. Parking spaces were non-existent and I had to leave the car in a spot where I probably shouldn’t have within our hotel car park. I’ll wait and see if the postman brings a penalty notice.
We followed the crowds to Old Trafford and reached the Sir Bobby Charlton Suite with ten minutes to spare. We had to pass through an airport-style scanner on the way in, although I’d have thought doing it on the way out to stop us nicking any silver cutlery might have been a better use of it.
The lounge was just about the right level of poshness with buffet food available and a couple of bars. It was busy, but far less of a crush than you’d get in a concourse. Our last-minute arrival meant that that we didn’t have much time for anything other than a pre-match slash, but we were in our seats as the teams came out.
We were surrounded by Man Utd fans, but they were very friendly in that way that you can be when you expect your team to win. They saw it as our ‘big day out’ and smiled indulgently at every chance they squandered, confident that there would be others. As you might have seen on the telly they ran out of chances eventually and we nicked it on pens. Big day out indeed.
I was interested in their attitude to Phil Jones. He’s been out injured for a long time and his appearance from the bench was treated with mirth. They praised everything he did with a smirk, as if he was there as a competition winner or something and clearly thought Man Utd were too good for a player like him. He didn’t look any worse a centre-half than Harry McGuire to me and I wouldn’t swap either of them for Dael Fry.
It seems commonplace these days for me to praise Chris Wilder in these posts and this one is no different. I’ve lost count of the times when a big Boro cup turnout has seen key players ‘rested’. Stevie Mac infuriated me at times in the UEFA Cup runs with his selections, although to be fair to him he generally got the results that he needed to overall. This was a full-strength selection from Wilder with the intention of giving it a real go against a Man Utd line-up that the fans around me reckoned was as strong as it could be from the players that they had available. It’s great when decisions like that pay off.
Tags: FA Cup 4th Round, Manchester United, Middlesbrough, Sir Bobby Charlton Suite
Trail of the Lion King 
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