A few weeks ago, Steve Lamb, a seasonal card holder at Old Trafford for 32 years, received a 'renewal communication' from Manchester United. In the emotionless language of the Apparatchik it sounded a bit like the prelude for an invitation for a stay in Siberia. And in a sense it was.
Steve is from stockport. He went to his first united competition with his father in 1971 when he was seven years old. Going to Old Trafford, traveling home and traveling, became a way of life. He was an obsessive. He is still. He and his two sons have had their season tickets 32 years.
They are also good seats. Behind the dugout in the Sir Bobby Charlton stand. Because they have had the season tickets for more than 25 years, there are plaques with the name of Steve and the names of his sons on their seats as recognition for their loyalty and dedication to the club.
That appreciation for loyalty seems to have changed. And it has changed abruptly. The feast for money can do that to a club.
It is not only in United that this is happening. It is in the Premier League, where traditional fans are pushed away for tourists or 'corporates', who will pay more. This is how social engineering, football style, looks like.
'We have identified a small number of general admission tickets that are directly next to the house and roads that will be converted into hospitality chairs this summer', the renewal communication of United to Steve Leest.
'This reflects the high value of this unique location and will help to increase hospitality income to keep the ticket prices of the general access season lower.
“Your current chair is included in this block and we must therefore find an alternative chair for the next season.”
So there it is. Thank you and good night. Thirty -two years old and then bang. Remove hell from those seats because you don't give us enough money. Take hell out because we can fleece a blue chip company or a tourist from the United States or China or Dubai for much more than you give us.
And let alone those plaques on your seats, those symbols of your loyalty, those symbols of what Manchester United once meant. We can get people on those seats that empty their wallets in the club store and run away with merchandise in a way that you will never do.
What happens to United? What happens to a club that once appreciated his supporters, ever proud of the affordability of his tickets?
It swings from misstep to misstep, coarse, cruel and incompetent in turn. The signs for what awaits us, on and next to the field, are not good.
Steve has written to the club several times to point out the injustice of what is happening to him and what seems to be around 500 other seasonal card holders in the same 'unique location' behind the Dug-Outs.
United, presumably, have seen what Manchester City has done in the Etihad, where seats in a similar position have been converted into an exclusive part for members of the tunnel club, who pay an excessive amount for their hospitality packages.
They are treated so well there that they often appear for the second half, in a good mood, long after the game has started again.
In another E -mail, Steve referred to how encouraged he had been when he had heard Sir Jim Ratcliffe, the increasingly unpopular and predatory minority owner of United, interviewed by Gary Neville on the overlap last month.
“My guidance for the management team,” said Ratcliffe, when he was forced by Neville about price increases, “is that we have to take care of the loyal supporters.
“The loyal supporter is the man who has the season card. The loyal supporter is the man who goes to the top six games, but he also goes to the other games. He not only chooses the top three games. '
Well, the 'management team' did not get the memo or Sir Jim was rather careful with the truth.
“We have to take care of the loyal supporters,” he said. Only these supporters, supporters such as Steve and his sons and the 500 supporters around them, apparently.
Only these supporters with the seats in an excellent location that we could sell for more money. Pull the other, Sir Jim, it has pound coins on it.
But don't fear. Everything is not lost. In another exchange with the club, Steve seemed to get the prospect that he could be moved to the 'atmosphere section' at Old Trafford. You may have heard this term earlier, but I didn't have it. The atmosphere section? Real? It is the kind of expression that threatens directly to your veins.
The atmosphere department in Old Trafford is located in the end of Stretford, it seems. It is designed for supporters who are increasingly apparent by being surrounded by daythrets and companies that have no feeling for the club.
Football is a curiosity for them, not a passion. They will not remember the time that English football areas were a huge atmosphere section.
That is the irony of this mess. Part of the reason that tourists and companies come to English land is to experience the atmosphere for which English football is famous. And yet the social engineering of the Premier League kills the atmosphere. They are destroying their own sales argument.
Again, it's not just Sir Jim and United who do this. There were thousands of empty seats in the Etihad when City played Aston Villa last week in a critical league match. The cheapest seats for adults were £ 71.
As they say in the language of one of the target markets of the city, take it into account. There were thousands of more empty seats at the end of the city for their FA Cup semi -final against Nottingham Forest in Wembley on Sunday. And this is the most successful club in the country, a club whose fans get dry. No wonder that the supporters of more and more clubs are in open rebellion.
After I was clamped to Tottenham on Sunday to Liverpool's victory, I walked back to my car in flooded with the celebration of fans. When I arrived at the Lower Breck Road, I saw a man destroying his terrace-shaped house with a giant flag in Liverpool and red-white bunting. Others, everywhere in the city, had already done the same thing.
These are the supporters, people like she, people like Steve and his sons, who want to drive away the top flight of English football, so that they can gush out even more money from the game on top of the billions they already earn.
They kill so much of what makes football special. Shame them.
Lock is a rare kind of man
It takes a rare kind of man and manager to do what Arne Slot did on Sunday in Anfield.
Slot took the microphone when it was offered to him at the most proud moment of his professional career in Liverpool to their 20th league title, and the first thing he did was thank his predecessor, Jurgen Klopp, for the team and the culture he had left him.
Slot's performance this season when managing the transition away from Klopp, whose ethos was led by the club, not only marks him as a brilliant manager, but as an extremely emotionally intelligent man.
Football is full of gigantic egos and unbridled megalomania. The absence of those characteristics in slot machines is good for Liverpool's title defense next season.