This is the full, unedited version. The published version needed a slightly shorter word count...
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Heald Green born, Liam Fox has been playing mechanic Dan Spencer in the award winning British Soap ‘Emmerdale’ for the last 8 years.
In reality, Liam has been a United fan and Season Ticket Holder for many years, currently watching the reds from East Stand.
Long time friend and fellow red, Iain Key spoke to Liam about his passion away from acting…
What’s your earliest memory of United?
1977 Cup Final when we won 2-1 against the Scousers. When we scored the 2nd goal my sister had just gone over the handle bars on her bike and smashed in to a lamp post… she came in crying, I was 7 and she was about 4. I didn’t have much sympathy and just wanted to watch the match… as did my mother. We are a loving family! I just thought ‘oh she’s screaming again’ which she’d do regularly. She’s 45 now and has’t changed…
Did you know the name and legacy of the club before then?
Er, yeah, I did, but I think, before then though I had a retro Liverpool kit, which was the only one my Mum could buy from the Gratten catalogue. The acrylic used to scratch me though which wasn’t great… I did meet Kenny Dalgleish once though and he was a very nice man.
When would you say you became a United Fan
You know what I remember the 1979 Cup Final when we came back but then eventually lost to Arsenal I’d got a bus to Wilmslow to get some 'Star Wars' action figures, my Dad had said ‘are you watching the match or getting these action figures’… so we went to Hobbyhorse on the big green bus and got back just before half time. I do seem to remember thought playing with my action figures in the sun rather than focus on the match...
So when did I become more engaged with United?…
So you were 9 in 1979?
Yeah, I got more engaged in 1980… Oh I know, 1981, no 82 I went to my first match when Chris Nicholl who played for Southampton at the time, in fact was he their manager? Think he still played, his Uncle worked with my Dad on a building site and got us to the match, I sat next to Alan Ball and met Kevin Keegan after the game and all that kind of stuff and from them I was hooked on going to Old Trafford, that was probably the the proper start of it, so I was 11 1/2 maybe 12…
What age were you when you started going to matches regularly
Not long after actually, from 82 we started going the following season really, within a year or so I was going to virtually every home game for £1.20 in the Stretford Seats and a 25p programme … and really awful pies
Who did you go with?
Mates from school and more often than not my cousin Julie
So you’d just become a teenager… what were your memories under Ron Atkinson?
Entertaining football, ramshackle Stretford End which was a bit of a cackhole really, pigeons in the roof shitting on your head, all part of the fun and a bloke called Clapper… well we called him Clapper, he was the one who’d start off the chant ‘UNITED’. All that period of standing cheaply in the Stretford End and those awlful spiked bars with people trying to get from the Stretford Paddock to the Stretford End, one guy had a spike go through his pants and he was there screaming cos it must have been pointing to his testicular region. This copper was just laughing at him…
Was that people who’d paid less to get into the Paddock?
I think it was £1.10 for a kid in the Paddock and £1.50 in the Stretford so you saved 40p and nearly got your balls ripped off… not really good economics
Do you remember when they used to have pies left at half time they used to throw them to the crowd?
Did they? I was so fat I was probably the kid that ate them all…
Maybe that was when we were in North Stand, it’s weird that when we were going then it wasn’t the business it is now…
Didn’t know what they were doing but then I guess neither do the current regime. They didn’t have a clue, football was different then. I remember Bryan Robson signing for supposably £1200 a week… my Grandad going mad about it… £1200 a week, I’d hate to think what he’s say now if he new what players were getting. Bryan Robson is a pauper in comparison…
Didn’t one of your relations play for United in the 50’s?
Jeff Whitefoot, who was my Nan’s cousin, I've never met.. I spoke to him when I did an MUTV interview over the phone. I was supposed to keep in touch with him but then ended up going to America the next day. He is still alive…
He was a proper Busby Babe, he left 6 months before the Munich Air Crash, a right back, played for England, won the FA Cup with Notts Forest in 1959.
After the Atkinson era, what can you remember about the early Fergie years?
Not great really. Probably worse than Mourhino, Van Gaal and Moyes put together, it was pretty bad. Jim Leighton in nets… I remember being really disappointed by him as I saw him go to a pub and buy a packet of fags, I thought they must be for his wife as I didn’t think an athlete would be smoking… but maybe he was… then we had Peter Davenport… Viv Anderson, although he was a good player…
I remember in the early Fergie years, when the Madchester thing was starting we’d go to the Griffin in Bowden…
Oh yeah, cos the women in Cheadle weren’t good enough for us, even though we never copped off with any of them; so we decided we needed a better class of woman so we’d get in Jimmy Bennett’s little Metro he’d bought from the auction and went to try and get off with people like Jenny Powell who was on ’Network 7’ and obviously failed… One night I bumped into Norman Whiteside and knocked his pint and he looked like he was going to knock me out… I begged him and said ’Norman you’re my hero’ and he forgave me… I’ve since mentioned that on Twitter and although I’m sure he didn’t really remember it he sent me a little smiley face…
I think it was the start of the 89 Season I’d bought the first 'Red Issue’ and us going in there and Robson, Whiteside and McGrath in there… two of them signed it and the other was too pissed to write his own name…
Probably McGrath? Could be any of them though…
So those early days of Fergie’s were quite difficult, did you think he’d get the sack?
I called his name, I wanted him gone, I was one of the fools in the stands, I’d had enough… Let’s face it it took him 5 years… Solskjaer hasn’t had a year...
I think he’s doing the right thing for the club
Yeah, definitely is… we have some great kids coming through, lets see where it gets to… Solskjaer couldn’t have got the job 4 or 5 years ago, the fans wouldn’t have had that, but I think now, probably seeing what’s happened with the other route, lets get back to basics and develop the team… and it’s been OK, we’ve had some ups and downs… certainly, the last few months oblast season was appalling but this season there have been some interesting signs… we just need to know the kids are inconsistent and there will be games we will lose… lets keep going in the right direction
Scott McTominey is really good I think in midfield…
Yeah he is, and Brandon Williams is a lunatic, he has a bit of steel, he’s tougher than me, but that’s not difficult
Who would you say is your all time favourite United Player
(Without hesitation) Eric Cantona, that’s quite easy
What would be your one standout moment?
You know that moment… United v Spurs, Irwin wasn’t it? Cantona got the ball, chipped it over and Irwin scored and I turned to you and said ‘whatever happens in the rest of our lives really football will doesn’t get better than that’… and then when ‘Looking For Eric’ came out, and Steve Evets says ‘’So Eric, tell me, what’s your best goal you’ve ever scored’ and Eric goes, ‘it wasn’t a goal it was a pass’… and Steve Evets goes (impression of Steve) ‘a pass, a pass?’ It was that very moment, I couldn’t believe that Eric in his whole career had pointed out a point.
If it wasn’t for Eric we wouldn’t have won everything we won, Eric was the catalyst and let the kids play, the kids? I sound so old!
Is there someone like that at the club now who is bringing them kids through?
We had Zlatan for a bit the other year… is there a figure? No, I think we need one, unless Ole is that man… but Ole’s not arrogant, and I think you need that, someone to say ‘I’m the best’
And have everyone else stirve for that ‘greatness’
If that’s your best moment, and that was a pass… what was your favourite goal?
There was a goal of Eric’s at Norwich, and the one where he turns slowly, those were the days weren’t they? Once we’d won the league, at the time I didn’t go as much as I was busy going to Uni, giving up my job and trying to be an actor, well, becoming and ‘out of work actor’ most of the time…
Individual goals? So many. It’s more what Eric gave to the team, Eric made us brilliant again, he made us cocky… he made us the best… and so entertaining. I think Ole’s trying to make us entertaining again… there’s no point in watching football if it’s not entertaining. I’m not interested in us winning trophies if we’re boring, I really don’t what to know, even if we’re getting 2 or 3 trophies a season and it’s boring I won’t be going because I’m not interested. I think there are a lot of United fans feel the same, others may say ‘well it’s trophy’ but I’d rather going watch paint dry than rubbish football.
Where did you watch the final in 99?
On my own, the future wife at the time decided to go out as she didn’t want to watch the match, but she went to a mates and actually ended up watching it… but I say in the house on my own, and when we scored the winner I jumped up, did a forward roll and smacked my head on the fireplace. She came back, excited and asked if I wanted to go down to Old Trafford, so we went down there and I ran round without my shoes on I’d forgotten to put them on in the excitement. I was very excited…
I didn’t do the same in 2008… wasn’t the same. We’d won it once… how long will it before we win it again? I don’t know
Can you remember anything about the years we got to the Champions League Final and didn’t win it?
Both Barcelona? 2009 / 2011, Barcelona just beat us… We weren’t good enough to beat a very special team …
I’m 50 thus year and for nearly 25 years of my life United were the best team Britain and for some of that the best team in Europe… Most football fans never get that. Hopefully we’ll get good again, but we’ll never be as good as we were
In those early years when we first started watching football it was always Liverpool or Everton were the dominant teams… and then it was United
When Liverpool were going down the pan I knew as a fan it wasn’t just Liverpool having a fallow couple of years, you could tell it was going to last for a while, never thought it would last 30 years, but you just thought that dominance had gone, there had been too many changes at Liverpool and that isn’t coming back, and that’s exactly how I feel about United at the minute, it’s done, it is what it is… and we will regroup and we become better and we will win things again, we’ve already won things over the last few.years… but we’re not going to be what we were… because no team can be anymore…
Do you think that’s more to do with the money?
There’s too much money. We just used to walk over teams, you can’t walk over teams anymore… that’s alright, it’s more competitive for everybody
Looking back to watching to Cup Final’s in 77 and 79 … why United and not City? Obviously they weren’t in those Cup Finals…
Because they’re shit
Did you ever get taken to see City?
City bored me… you know why I don’t like City, we had a little silver transistor radio on the side and Tony Book was getting interviewed after the game and all I remember is him going ‘errr and errr’ and I just thought City were like a big question mark. United had Tommy Doc, and although I don’t like him now cos of the way he slagged Fergie off over the yeas, I think there was a bit of jealousy there as ‘it should have been him’… but he’d kept it in his pants… it could have been him…
I think that ’Too Good To Go Down’ film taught me a lot that I was too young to know about that era
‘How good they were’
Yeah, and how good they could have been… if things had been different, potentially we would have been pushing Liverpool and Everton in the 80’s
They were brilliant, Stevie Coppell… I was a kid, but I remember them being exciting… for me,, United, it’s like, Steve Coppell, Andrew Kancheskis, Ryan Giggs. Back in the day, Strachen, Jesper Olsen, proper wingers… I used to love that.
That’s one good thing about this season so far… Wan Bissaka and James
You can’t knock Ole with regards that at the club, Wan Bissaka, MacGuire who we all knew was good, Dan James, what a player, didn’t expect him to be as good as he is.
Colchester in the League Cup?
If we don’t win that we may as well give up… good for Colchester
But anyway, for the rest of the season, I think we’ll be alright, I think we’ll finish 6th… 5th would be amazing but 6th would do for now… we’re not good enough to be in the Champions League and need a couple of seasons to be competitive, we’re a couple of seasons off that yet
Do you think we could win the Europa League?
I think we should win that depending on who falls out of the Champions League… they look like they’re enjoying the football again
FA Cup?
Yeah we can win that, we’re capable on our day of being anyone… and we can win anything
In the league, we’re just nowhere near to Liverpool or City at the minute… we’re not at that level and there’s no
point in denying it. I’d rather be a fan that says City and Liverpool are great at the minute. Liverpool now being more consistent than City… I think Pep may disappear soon .. I think he’s done his time…
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