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Annual Report

1st January 2010
About IMUSA

IMUSA was founded in 1995 and came about because of the tensions between the fans' natural enthusiasm for supporting their team and the clubs' increasingly commercial approach that required us to sit down, shut up and passively hand over ever increasing amounts of money.

IMUSA is now one of the oldest independent fans’ organisation in the country. Membership is still the same price it was when IMUSA was first formed. Benefits to members include access to a nationwide panel of lawyers expert in football related matters should these ever be needed and IMUSA representation for individuals who find themselves in dispute with the club or authorities. An emergency line number is also now provided on our website. Membership costs £5 and runs from season-end to season-end. Anyone joining now will continue to be a member until the end of the 10/11 season.

IMUSA members are also affiliate members of the nationally representative Football Supporters’ Federation and are encouraged to join as individual members as the basic FSF e-membership is now cost free. IMUSA chair, Mark Longden continues to serve on the FSF’s Executive Committee.

IMUSA’s year - 2009

Now in its fifteenth year IMUSA continues to thrive and membership numbers are once again up on the previous year. Our website was declared the fourth best United website in the world in a list that included the club’s official manutd.com website. Benefits to our members have this year included free prize draws for United related books and T-shirts as well as the offer of free coach travel to the FA Cup semi-final in Wembley.

We also continue to offer our members access to a specialist panel of lawyers. Our standard advice to any member faced with arrest is not to admit to any offence you did not commit and not to accept a caution, as this remains on your record. This advice proved invaluable for a number of members this year who found themselves in this situation. In each case they challenged the arrest and in all cases except one the charges were dropped. In the one instance where the charge was not dropped the case was dismissed by the judge because of lack of evidence.

These outcomes reflect the general trend for fans to become more informed about the law (as more laws are faced against football supporters and against football supporters only) and an increasing willingness to challenge these laws. One of IMUSA’s ambitions is to see the repeal of Section 2 of Chapter 57 of the Sporting Events (Control of Alcohol etc) Act (1985) as this requires no proof of ‘being drunk in a designated sports ground’ beyond the opinion of the arresting officer and for which there is no feasible defence.

Fans also face a significant distortion of intentions behind the issuing of banning orders. These were only supposed to be handed out for crimes involving violence but the practice now is to demand a banning order for virtually every football related offence. Nationally there were 956 banning orders issued but only 354 arrests for offences involving violence.

These figures show that supporters must be ever more vigilant against being treated unfairly and to be prepared to challenge the law where they think an injustice has been done. This is especially so in a World Cup year, where there is traditionally an even greater enthusiasm to issue banning orders.

Continuing Issues

2010 also marks the fifth year since IMUSA were thrown off the Premier League required Fan’s Forum by the club. This leaves Manchester United’s fans’ forum without any democratically elected representation whatsoever and our continuing concern is that things are worse for matchgoing fans because of this.

There continues to be a palpable lack of transparency about the Fans’ Forum (last minutes published on the club’s official website as of 01/01/10 are from the meeting in April 2009 and the last results published from the Fans’ Satisfaction survey date from 2004).

Ticket prices continue to rise. Safestanding is still on the agenda and although the club has adopted a much more ‘blind-eye’ approach in some areas of the ground this still means that fans have to stand in front of seats, when purpose built safestanding areas, such as those already in place in Germany and other European countries would be even safer. Our call is for safestanding to become a right, not a privilege to be granted and removed at the whim of the Safety Officer or stewards.

IMUSA also continues to lobby for improvements for fans in other areas. Issues include trying to get the club to adopt ‘due process’ when fans are evicted or have their season tickets removed. This would require the club to explain the reasons why such actions were taken and for fans to have the right to defend themselves and appeal what may be an unfair decision made in the heat of the moment by a steward perhaps only minimally qualified to do their job.

Fans’ Embassies for overseas away matches also remain on the agenda and our understanding is that most within the club view the provision of these ‘information and assistance points’ run by fans for fans very positively but that the senior management are resistant to the idea. They are apparently content to leave the financial burden, organisation and running of these to the Football Supporters’ Federation and IMUSA even though this means that only Champions’ League finals can be covered.

IMUSA’s point remains that had such Fans’ Embassies been available for other games, then Reds such as the ‘Roma 4’ would not have been jailed for want of access to an English speaking lawyer and that this is an important customer care issue. That is, the current approach of delivering fans on organised trips costing hundreds of pounds into a town then telling them to “f*@& off and watch football” could be very problematic for the club if a major incident should occur.

As the club’s critical friend we would advise that the continued failure to engage with IMUSA, the oldest independent fans’ organisation in the country, is well known within football circles and has to our certain knowledge been discussed by the Football Association, Premier League and UEFA.

We believe that this is harmful to the club’s reputation as a world leader because it remains ‘the elephant in the room’ in any discussion Manchester United has with anybody about their claims to take fans' issues seriously.

Postscript

IMUSA learned with deep regret of the passing of former Busby Babe and Munich air crash survivor Albert Scanlon on 23rd December 2009 aged just 74.

The club’s shoddy treatment of Albert and other surviving air crash victims has been well documented (here) and it was to be hoped that lessons had been learned.

United’s recent directive that ex-players currently working as ‘match-day hosts’ cannot watch the game from spare seats in the ground or have a hot meal shows that there is still a long way to go before all former United players are treated by the club with the respect that is due to them.

IMUSA 1st January 2010