Picture this sight.
It is ten minutes to three o’clock and Sir Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United are preparing for their Premier League encounter with Sunderland at the Stadium of Light. Despite the typical pre-match banter and chatter that is present before a big game, the audible ‘plink’ of a droplet falling from a distance begins to become louder and louder as if they fell at a rapid pace.
As a bucket used to withhold the liquid was replaced by a large bin, the overwhelming smell of human feces
began to take a stranglehold of the dressing room, with the famous Manchester United suits destroyed along with many of the expensive items that your typical footballer would have with him.
A leak in the Stadium of Light roof saw the away dressing room destroyed, the game delayed, and Sunderland manager Steve Bruce personally sweeping up the mess left behind due to the most likely humiliation happening in front of not only his favourite former manager but also probably for the never-ending fear of a telling off from his said ex-boss.
According to people involved, the dressing room was actually absolutely destroyed and in quite a comical fashion, Dimitar Berbatov lost the plot as his visual anger was one of the more famous things from this game with his former United Kitman breaking down the events that became dubbed ‘Poogate’.
“Steve Bruce comes in the door at the back of the dressing room. He had this brush, it must have been 14 feet wide.
“And there’s big Brucie coming in at the back just shovelling this s*** out of the dressing room.
“We just put the suits in black bags and destroyed the lot.”
“There was a “drip, drip, drip” with a bucket underneath, so we thought it was a leak in the ceiling.
“The boys were getting ready, all walking around this bucket, and went out on the pitch for the warm-up.
“We’d been there for a few minutes and one of the security guards came and he said, “Albert, I think you’d better come in the dressing room, that bucket’s getting a bit full”.
“By the time we got back in the changing room, the bucket had been changed to a bin.
“Well, we walked in and they had these ceiling tiles, before you could say “whip”, one of the ceiling tiles just burst out. S*** everywhere!
“The gaffer just got out. It was all over the suits, the clothes, up the walls, up the ceiling.
With the game delayed by 30 minutes due to the away side’s dressing room issues, it was a perfect opportunity for the home side to pick up a result.
With Lee Cattermole, Steed Malbranque, and Zenden totally eclipsing Paul Scholes and Darren Fletcher in the middle of the field, the traffic was largely one way, and although lone striker Darren Bent had his work cut out, Nemanja Vidic left the field at half-time knowing he was in a game.
Sunderland had a glorious opportunity to take the lead with just 16 minutes gone when Cattermole’s superb through-ball and Malbranque’s excellent first touch put the Frenchman in on van der Sar whilst Nedum Onuoha saw an instinctive shot hacked off the line after he had got a touch to Ahmed Elmohamady’s driven cross, but it was the woodwork which came to United’s rescue eight minutes before the break.
Zenden was allowed to set himself after shifting the ball onto his left foot 20 yards out, and although his swerving drive evaded van der Sar’s outstretched arm, it hit the post.
United swapped the ‘ineffective’ Michael Owen for the ‘angry’ Dimitar Berbatov, and he went closest to getting an unlikely winner for United through his offside goal, followed up with his blasted shot inches wide three minutes later as the game entered its closing stages.
Asamoah Gyan came on late and tried to make United’s day absolutely horrendous, but his audacious overhead kick went wide, where Sunderland had to settle for a draw, whilst United were probably just happy to get out of there after stinking the place out!
