This is a kind of purpose: to ask what these things mean. How is it that the story-craving and myth-making parts of our imaginations are able to see greatness and find joy in some arbitrary movements on a field? What does the rhythmic sidestep or the incisive pass echo in human experience? [...]

You might have been worried, after the touching memorial to the victims of the 1958 Munich air crash at the Manchester derby yesterday, that the open market would never offer you, the wealthy obsessive, the chance to buy macabre memorabilia of the disaster online. After all, human sentiments being the inconvenient sticky things they [...]

Everything I like and everything I don’t like about Cristiano Ronaldo’s style of play can be seen in this riveting video, which tracks him up close throughout the Man Utd-Portsmouth game this week. He’s a little bit talented, in case you had any doubt. Oh, and his 2-0 free-kick, which Alex Ferguson called [...]

Brilliant stepovers etc., more goals as a winger etc., unstoppable young etc., yards of etc., sensational etc., best player in the etc.
But there’s this: that he plays like the scent of aftershave. It’s the style of something decorative and supplemental that’s passed out of all subtlety and become the noticeable fact about the [...]

The Run of Play will be operating on a reduced holiday schedule for the next few days, which means there will be posts “every once in a while.” (That’s a direct quote from our operating handbook, which also contains the words “occasionally,” “inconsistently,” “when we feel like it,” and “Bolton.”) You’ll have to [...]

I’m not sure if there’s a new curry place delivering to Old Trafford, or if he’s just feeling feisty after celebrating his 21st anniversary on the job, but Alex Ferguson is on a tear through the newspapers that’s flabbergasting even by his stratospheric standards. First we learn that the FA are investigating him over his [...]

It happened, and amazingly, we survived: Manchester United played Arsenal, in a climate of hype that demonstrated how far the British media have come since the embarrassing cocoon of silence that surrounded the build-up to D-Day. (”So often the big battles disappoint, but with these two forces fighting at the absolute peak of their powers, [...]

Alex Ferguson is complaining about the officiating in Manchester United’s 2-2 draw with Arsenal yesterday. It’s nonsense, of course, but I’m still glad he’s doing it. My watch was five minutes off, and hearing Sir Alex moan about the referee after a big match always helps me get it back on time.
What’s frustrating about this [...]

What are we looking at here?
Arsenal v. Manchester United, Wenger v. Sir Alex, Fabregas v. Ronaldo, the league’s sharpest attack v. the league’s bluntest defense, 316 wins v. 375 wins, and Howard Webb v. the human tendency to assume a falling man was tripped, in the biggest match of the Premier League season so far. [...]

He looks, anyway, most of the time, something run-of-the-mill or only a very little above it, with his scowling sudden lurches for the ball and his dropping back to hunt for it in midfield. In the middle of the pitch he’s too determined, too intent on the one bright place where he wants to put [...]