Chapter 645: The Petition!

By the time the final whistle had faded beneath the celebrations at the DW Stadium, the conversation surrounding Manchester United had already begun to sound like a eulogy.

The scoreline was bad enough.

Eight goals conceded against Wigan Athletic, a side United had expected to compete with in all of its ingenuity that season rather than suffer at the hands of, was the sort of result that could define a season on its own.

What made it worse was the manner in which it had happened.

United had led by two goals, looked comfortable for a spell, and then watched the match slip beyond their control.

By the end, there had been no convincing response, no late rally, not even the consolation of a goal that stood.

And for supporters who had spent years insisting that the club’s stature would eventually carry it through the difficult years, the result was becoming impossible to explain away.

The first signs of the fallout appeared online, where anger gave way to arguments about ownership, recruitment, management, and the standards expected of a club of United’s size.

Then, as the evening wore on, the frustration spilt out of phones and computers and onto the streets of Manchester.

Groups of supporters gathered, first in small numbers and then in larger crowds.

Some carried scarves and homemade signs, but most arrived simply to join the shouting and crying their hearts out to a club that was playing like a promised dream not fulfilled.

By the time a section of the crowd made its way towards Carrington, the training ground had become the focus of a protest that had little to do with the result alone.

"WE WANT CHANGE!"

"THIS IS MANCHESTER UNITED!"

"HOW MUCH MORE DO WE HAVE TO TAKE?"

The chants carried beyond the gates as supporters demanded accountability from the people running the club.

Police and security personnel watched the gathering closely as tempers flared.

Some fans argued with one another; others pushed towards the barriers, and what had begun as a protest grew increasingly disorderly.

It was not the entire city, nor even every United supporter, but the anger among those who had come out was unmistakable.

For them, the eight-two defeat had not arrived in isolation.

A year earlier, United had travelled to Anfield and suffered a humiliating seven-nil defeat against Liverpool.

That result had been painful precisely because of the rivalry attached to it.

It had given Liverpool supporters a scoreline to celebrate and United fans a memory they had spent months trying to leave behind.

Then Wigan had beaten them five-two at Old Trafford once more at the start of the season.

That defeat had been difficult to accept in its own right.

Losing at home to a side that had spent much of its history outside the elite of English football had left questions hanging over United’s players and their ability to respond when a match turned against them.

But there had been room to argue that it was an isolated embarrassment, a bad day against an opponent who had found a way to exploit their weaknesses.

The return fixture had removed much of that comfort.

It was fight or flight for United, but they hadn’t even been able to do either.

Wigan had beaten them again, this time by eight goals to two, and they had just taken it, like the good dogs they were.

United had conceded thirteen goals across the two meetings with a club many of their supporters would once have expected to beat comfortably, even with their youth sides, dare some say.

Whatever excuses could be made for an individual performance, the pattern was becoming difficult to ignore.

The Liverpool defeat had been a humiliation.

The first loss to Wigan had been a warning and the second had made the warning impossible to dismiss.

The club, if something wasn’t done about it, was heading into ruin.

By late evening, even the language used to discuss the club had begun to change.

It was no longer only a question of whether the manager could turn things around, or whether a few new signings would solve the problem.

People were asking what Manchester United actually stood for on the pitch anymore, and whether the reputation of the club was doing more work than the team itself.

Then someone started a petition.

Its proposal was deliberately provocative: Manchester United should lose its place among the Premier League’s established top six.

At first, the petition spread as a joke.

Screenshots appeared with mocking captions, and rival supporters shared it for the obvious pleasure of watching United become the subject of ridicule.

But as the number of signatures grew, the discussion underneath it became more serious.

What did it mean to be a top-six club?

Was it a matter of historical success, global support, revenue, and reputation?

Or did the label have to be earned through what a team actually did on the pitch?

United still possessed the history, the audience, and the financial weight associated with one of the biggest clubs in the world.

Nobody could erase that.

But if a team carrying those advantages could not compete consistently, what exactly was its place in the present-day Premier League supposed to represent?

The petition was not going to change the league’s structure.

It had no formal authority to do so.

But it had given thousands of people a way to express a question that had been building for some time.

And, inevitably, Wigan became part of the argument.

They were not an established member of the Premier League’s traditional elite.

They did not possess United’s global reach or the same financial resources.

Yet within a season they had come to hold weight a league deemed as the most competitive in football and sports as a whole.

They had beaten one of the biggest teams in football history twice in a season, scored thirteen goals across those games, and spent the intervening months putting together a league campaign that was becoming difficult to describe as a fluke.