Manchester United’s season so far could be kindly described as ‘mixed’, but one definite positive has been the colour and the flags in the Stretford End.
Ruben Amorim’s team looked like they were starting to make the stadium home again… but now haven’t won any of their last three matches there, despite all three opponents — Everton, West Ham and Bournemouth — being in the bottom half of the table at the time of those fixtures.
Going into Friday’s game at home to Newcastle United (who have one Premier League away win this season) and then facing Wolverhampton Wanderers (who have none) at Molineux on Tuesday, United are a disappointing 13th in the home league table with four wins, two draws and two defeats.
United’s 12 goals conceded in what was once their fortress is only better than the home records of last-placed Wolves, second-bottom West Ham and Nottingham Forest, who are 16th.
On a more positive note, only Arsenal, Manchester City and Leeds have scored more at home in the top flight — though three other teams have scored the same as United’s 16.
There’s room for improvement then, as there was with the atmosphere for years at Old Trafford.
Some of the best United teams of the Sir Alex Ferguson era played games in front of quieter and quieter crowds, as the terraces were replaced with seats and ticket prices increased steeply in the 1990s and noughties. Thankfully, fans can now stand rather than occupy 18 per cent of Old Trafford’s 74,000-plus seats, thanks to the safe-standing overhaul that had long been pushed for. With it, the stadium’s Stretford End has returned to being the vocal heartland of United’s support.
An area of executive seating in the centre of the stand (block 205) being restored to general-admission ticket holders helped, and then The Red Army group got involved in 2017, and has brought the noise. This is where groups of mates stand together, and they have become a well-organised community.
Before this season, The Red Army started a “Reclaim The Stretford End” campaign to bring back the colour from the 1970s and ’80s, when the then terrace was at its peak.
It has worked.
It started with 70 flags before the Arsenal game on the opening weekend of this season, all self-funded.
‘Manchester. Established 1878’ read one, with a graphic of every trophy won by the club. ‘United We Are. United We Stand. The Greatest. By far the best in the land’ says another, held up on two sticks. There was an image of David Beckham scoring that goal at Selhurst Park in 1996, plus banners featuring lyrics including: ‘All the lads and lasses with smiles on their faces, Walking down the Warwick Road, To see Matt Busby’s aces.’
(Andy Mitten/The Athletic)
Leaflets with instructions about the banners and how they would be collected afterwards were distributed to fans.
The Red Army is proudly independent but there’s a trust with the club, and several regulations were waived so that 2x3m (roughly 6ftx10ft) flags supported by two poles, for instance, could be used. It was a success, and the number of banners has increased since.
The club and the group do not always agree, but there is a dialogue and The Red Army has helped boost Old Trafford’s long underwhelming atmosphere. Rather than moan about it, these fans have acted.
Ahead of the 1-1 draw with West Ham on December 4, The Athletic met up with members of The Red Army. They had gathered the night before that Thursday game, over a dozen of them placing the flags around the Stretford End, which took a couple of hours. These flags are usually stored inside the stadium between matches, and several of the group were invited to meet the United players at the training ground recently.
The flags are kept at Old Trafford between games (Andy Mitten/The Athletic)
“They were all sound,” says Steve Scullion, who is one of The Red Army. “They loved what we’re doing. We spoke to Amad, (Benjamin) Sesko, (Bryan) Mbeumo and (Matheus) Cunha, who said that when he scores, he’s going to come to our flags (showing the Brazilian forward in the pose of the famous Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro).”
The Red Army has met up in several locations ahead of home games, sometimes in the city centre but now at Seven Bro7hers, a Salford brewery (actually run by seven brothers) with a warehouse by the Manchester Ship Canal, close to Old Trafford. The space is given over to the group before matches, and local beers are sold. One, called Scarlet Ribbon, is a pilsner named after a United song, and costs £5 per pint.
Around 200 to 300 members of The Red Army gathered there before the West Ham game, where pride of place went to a flag featuring Mancunian musician Gary ‘Mani’ Mounfield, formerly of The Stone Roses and Primal Scream and a United fan, who had passed away in late November. The group acted quickly after he died to have a flag ready for the game against Everton four days later — and the club helped out, too.
Scullion, 44, and from Newton Heath, the working-class area in northern Manchester where United started life, is a boxing coach who has worked with professionals and amateurs.
Steve Scullion with the flag in tribute to ‘Mani’ (Andy Mitten/The Athletic)
He has 40 young boxers coming to his gym in Failsworth, including 22-year-old George Killeen, a Commonwealth Youth champion. Killeen goes in The Red Army’s section and to away games when he can get a ticket (the latter is a challenge, with United’s allocation routinely four times oversubscribed). Scullion takes his son, Jacob, 13, too. There is a good spread of ages in The Red Army. The Athletic also meets Marcin and his 11-year-old son Alex, who tells us how much he loves being involved in the group and helping set the flags out.
The number of these continues to grow. At the moment, they are only on the main tier of seating but the aim is to get them in among the 6,000 seats of the second tier, too. It’s not just flags and banners, though. The songs are also important — the variety of them and the way they are sung.
There are lessons to be learnt everywhere. A couple of the banners have disappeared. Other fans have asked if they can keep the flags. No, you can’t, and a note is made of where each one gets placed, so they can be tracked if they do go missing.
There’s even an art to holding the flags, and to waving them. The Red Army has contacts with other fan groups. One Bayern Munich ultra who was visiting Manchester even grabbed a huge flag and started waving it, to show how they do it back in Bavaria. “The flags can’t droop. You have to pull them tight, so they look good,” says Scullion.
(Andy Mitten/The Athletic)
The flags are raised 10 minutes before the game, so the players see them when they walk out of the tunnel, located between the Stretford End and the main stand. The Red Army therefore encourages fans to be in position 15 minutes before kick-off — a challenge, given the culture of many British supporters (as opposed to ultras groups in continental Europe) of arriving as late as possible. Doing that has been further complicated this season by queues at the Old Trafford turnstiles as a new ticket system is introduced.
These flags have made their way to away matches, too. The 3,000-strong United end at Liverpool is usually a sea of dark colours, since few fans wear their colours to Anfield. But this season, there were ‘We’ll support you ever more’ and ‘Red Army’ banners on show.
Away from Old Trafford, a huge ‘Manchester is Red’ flag was raised on the city’s central Deansgate road, surrounded by multiple red flares, before the most recent Manchester derby at the Etihad in September. There are similar groups at Crystal Palace, Arsenal, Rangers and Celtic, but The Red Army has an identity of its own, with original flags and ideas. And Old Trafford is better for it.
“We’re always looking for fan-led unique designs,” says Scullion. “We’d like it to spread all over the stadium. We don’t want the ground to look naff. We want to be the best, and want Old Trafford to be the best it can be.”