Graphic: Does size matter?

At a recent Manchester United home match there was a first-time Old Trafford visitor sitting a few rows in front of the press box. You could tell that he was a first-timer because he wore a look last seen on the face of Charlie Bucket on entering Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. As the clock ticked down towards kick-off, he joined in the songs being pumped out over the PA system and tried in vain to use his camera to take the perfect photograph against this famous backdrop. He looked as if he was in heaven.

Then the match started and a hush fell over the so-called Theatre of Dreams. As he exhorted his fellow supporters to stand and join in his chants, the middle-aged man began to attract a combination of amusement, bemusement and disdain from those sitting around him. Some looked towards a nearby steward, as if to ask what he planned to do with this upstart.

The man was threatened with ejection and, by half-time, with his efforts to sing and shout having met calls to sit down and shut up, his enthusiasm had gone. He will know what one United supporter was talking about yesterday when he likened Old Trafford to “a police state”.

After his team’s 1-0 win over Birm-ingham City on Tuesday, Sir Alex Ferguson complained that the atmosphere in the stadium was more akin to a funeral. “The crowd was dead,” the United manager said. “It’s the quietest I’ve heard the crowd here. It was like a funeral, it was so quiet. It’s all right saying players will make the fans respond, but in some situations, like today, we need them to get behind us.”

For thousands of United supporters returning to work yesterday, this was an unwelcome gibe. On factory floors and in offices in Manchester and beyond there were jokes about prawn sandwiches – this being the dish that Roy Keane, in a similar outburst, made synonymous with the corporate seats at Old Trafford.

They do not serve anything so mundane as that in the hospitality areas these days – in the Europa Suite, where tickets are £425 a head plus VAT, they promise only “the finest cuisine” – but that is by the by. Mud sticks and for many supporters there is no allegation more hurtful than the one that they prefer fine dining than getting behind their team. It is a strange situation, given the increasing diversity of fans and of what they expect to put into – and take out of – the match-day experience, but Ferguson’s comments touched a nerve among United supporters.

“A lot of people are pretty upset because it shows a lack of understanding about what it’s like to be a football fan in 2008,” Colin Hendrie, of the Independent Manchester United Supporters Association, said yesterday. “You can’t stand up to make a noise. If you try to stand up, you’ve got stewards who are ejecting you, taking your season ticket away.

“It’s almost like a police state in a football ground now. If you do stand up, people will take your arm, put it behind the back of your neck and throw you out of the ground. Under those circumstances, what atmosphere does he [Ferguson] want?”

Ferguson wants an atmosphere such as the one he witnessed at Celtic Park in the Champions League last season, or at Hampden Park, where he attended Scotland’s World Cup qualifying match against Italy in November, or at Anfield – on a great European night at least – or even at Fratton Park. But, contrary to the prawn sandwich myth, Old Trafford is not hushed every week. Against AS Roma and AC Milan in the Champions League last season the place was rocking. These, though, are exceptions to the rule that spectators at Old Trafford should be seen and not heard.

The “police state” quote is evidently an exaggeration – only three fans have been ejected for standing at United’s past three home matches, with the club left to decide whether their season tickets are to be confiscated – but United fans frequently express dismay at the match-day atmosphere, citing various factors.

These include poor acoustics in the Stretford End since it was rebuilt, the number of corporate seats and day-trippers, the pricing-out of many hard-core supporters, particularly since the Glazer family’s takeover in 2005, and, uniquely to United, the formation of a breakaway club, FC United of Manchester, whose regular 2,000-plus attendances consist mostly of fans disenfranchised from Old Trafford.

Some of those fans – raucous individuals who continue to follow United away from home – boycott matches at Old Trafford because they do not want to line the Glazers’ pockets.

Ferguson has never hidden his contempt for those who jumped ship to set up a new club and he went farther in an interview on Tuesday when he criticised the “unfair” protests against the Glazers. Some of the fears expressed at the time of the takeover have not come to pass, but supporters are entitled to be upset by an aggressive ticketing policy that has priced many of them out of the ground.

The average cost of a ticket has increased from £26.50 in 2004-05 to £34 three seasons later, a sum that will continue to rise at rates far beyond inflation. The most expensive noncorporate tickets are £44, but the corresponding figures at Arsenal and Chel-sea are £94 and £65. In their business plan in 2006, the Glazers stated that “while Premiership teams in the north of England have historically been viewed as having a lower-wealth fan base, the perceived gulf in fan wealth is not enormous” and that “in the context of the quality of the Old Trafford experience, the club’s tickets have been undervalued”.

What, though, is that “Old Trafford experience” presumed to entail? Where does the entertainers’ duty to entertain end and the supporters’ duty to support begin? When they priced out some of their most loyal supporters, United were looking for fans with deep pockets, not loud voices. Significantly, they are regarded not just as fans but as customers, willing to spend £3 on a match programme full of adverts for MUTV, MU Finance, MU Mobile and the club’s myriad commercial partners, and to buy merchandise in the Megastore.

The real money, though, comes from supporters in the corporate seats, of which there are a little more than 9,000. United boast in excess of 1,000 executive boxes – Liverpool just 32 – which gives some idea why the North West rivals are so mismatched when it comes to commercial revenue. United’s match-day income is more than £3.5 million per game, well over double that at Anfield. If that additional revenue comes at a price in terms of atmosphere, it is one that the Glazers are willing to pay – as would their counterparts at Liverpool.

But is it any different at Liverpool? Not at the run-of-the-mill Premier League matches that go unmentioned when the clichés are trotted out about the magical Anfield atmosphere on a European night. English stadiums are not the places they were 40 years ago, or even ten years ago. They have been sanitised and sterilised. Except when your team truly need you, you are expected to be seen and not heard.