Manchester United And The Crucifixion Of David Moyes

Editorial | Article posted on January 13th, 2025

The floodlights are blinding. This is after all, a stadium of light and its illumination is searing. There is no place for me to hide my nakedness from its hostile radiance. Beads of sweat weep down my furrowed brow but I cannot mop them. My hands have been nailed. Flesh sandwiched between metal and wood. Bones shattered, blood spattered, a mortal man broken and left to slowly rot on this very public cross as spectators, both faithful and non, jeer my every pained movement. I stretch every sinew to delay the inevitable feasting of the scavengers on my still-beating heart.
I lift my weary head upwards towards those shadowy stands and I see Him, looking down upon His creation with barely a flinch of empathy. We are transparent in His eyes. He hears our every thought, our every vengeful whisper against His dogma and He judges us, preparing His retribution with intricate attention to a Grand Design. My parched lips crack as I summon whatever strength still remaining in my aching body to cry, "Father, oh Father, why do you forsake me thus?" He does not answer. He does not answer any of my questions now. He merely looks to the living Ghost of the Holy Trinity that sits on his left shoulder and they both ruefully shake their heads. It is then that I realise that my sacrifice will be a solitary one.

Questions intensify and dovetail as my breathing becomes more spasmodic. Fragments of thought surface but instantly become consumed by the human pain that my anatomy is forced to endure.
Why do they hate me so when once they followed so unquestioningly? Why is my image now used as a symbol of the folly of false faith? If our God retired His throne in a fanfare of celestial trumpets in the fifth month of the twenty-seventh year of his ascendance, why does He continue to haunt us with His omniscience at every juncture and junction?
One question, above all others, lodges itself in my semi-lucid consciousness: If I was Your Chosen One, then why do You now turn Your back?
You seduced me, flattered me, tempted me with words more becoming of Your most eternal of enemies. He who resides in the South but simultaneously in the dark hearts of men. He told the world You favoured him, that You quenched his avaricious thirst with the finest of wines, that he was Your desired emissary to continue Your mission. But his was a false pride and You promptly banished him and summoned me, Your faithful servant, made in Your very own image. A messiah who would lead Your flock to the promised land. A living embodiment of the One Love hymnal, sung