Written by Justin Mottershead for RedFlagFlyingHigh.com: A few months ago I published an article entitled “In Defence of Darron Gibson” in which rather unsurprisingly I stated how I felt the put upon midfielder had been hard done by a lot of United fans.
Such was the response I’d have probably received more favourable comments had I written an article entitled “In Defence of Paedophiles” or “Steven Gerrard, My Player of the Decade.”
It seemed United fans were pretty much agreed that the Republic of Ireland international was simply not good enough for Old Trafford -unless we were looking for ground staff -and even that was debatable according to certain comments.
Trawl through twitter, or any United forums after most games which feature Gibson and you’re likely to see words such as ‘lazy’ ‘inept’ and ‘pointless.’ It seems ‘r Darron has quickly become the player most Reds blame when things don’t go our way.
In the past whenever I’ve defended a United player be it Jonny Evans, John O’Shea, Dimitar Berbatov or Michael Carrick there’s alway been at least a minority of fans willing to back me up. With Gibbo though it seems his support has at times been practically non-existent.
Take a look at the whole ‘Gibson joins then leaves twitter’ debacle. Some of the tweets aimed at the Republic of Ireland player were quite frankly a disgrace.
Here’s a selection of tweets that made me about as proud to be a United fan as I would be if my Dad joined the BNP.
@dgibbo28 your performance on saturday was one of the worst I’ve ever seen of any utd player. scared of the ball much?’
@dgibbo28 hasn’t tweeted yet. Seems somewhat fitting after the countless anonymous performances we’ve seen from the ‘footballer’
@dgibbo28 my mate thought you were about 33 years old in the heart of midfield! Movement like pirlo!!
@dgibbo28 team do all hard work keeping possession then u hit row Z every f*ckin time!!
@dgibbo28 the biggest compliment i can give you is that you are better than Carrick
Why slagging off a player to his face- or at least his twitter account -who plays for a club we all love seemed like a good idea is beyond me but some Reds felt it was.
Fast forward to the game against Schalke and all of a sudden Gibson was no longer the pariah he had been a few weeks earlier.
In a recent article Stockport Red made a tongue in cheek comment about the midfielder being worth 50p and I was amazed- and somewhat pleased to see the amount of United fans jumping to Gibson’s defence- even if some of them may not have got the humour behind the comment. Check out the article and comments here.
It seemed a lot of United fans were impressed enough by Gibson’s sterling showing against Schalke to be willing to jump to his defence.
This made me think could Gibson be finally winning the fans over? It wasn’t just the fans who were supportive of the man formerly known as dgibbo28.
Wayne Rooney described Gibson as “class” while Antonio Valencia compared him to Andreas Iniesta!
Aristotle once wrote: “One swallow does not make a Spring” and while one good performance against a p*ss poor Schalke side is unlikely to earn Gibson any player of the season awards it may just be seen as a turning point in his United career.
Let’s not forget around ten years ago Phil Neville was considered something of a whipping boy by many United fans until a sterling performance against Arsenal seemed to turn him into a legend almost overnight. Ditto Darren Fletcher.
If Gibson does carve out a career at Old Trafford and admittedly at the moment it’s a big ‘if’ then Wednesday night’s game against Schalke may well be looked back upon as the night he began to turn the Red tide in his favour.
Am I right in thinking Gibson is beginning to convince Reds of his worth or should he still “do us all a favour and f*ck off”? Feel free to comment below.
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It’s tytpical of “fans” who don’t check out the facts. gibson is a very young midfielder, scholes et al were around the same age when they first started getting in the first team, Gibson has already gained experience against top english and european opposition, players in his position don’t develope into top players until they are 25 upwards. After saying all that there is one basic thing these negative fools always seem to forget, Fergie is arguably the best football manager of all time and if he thinks a player is good enough then surely a taxi driver in Eccles or a plumber in oldham shoudln’t think they know better!