‘I wanted to come into it like Liam Gallagher. To mix things up’: Manchester United’s worst nightmare MARK GOLDBRIDGE tells OLIVER HOLT all on his Gary Neville deal, ‘fake’ presenters and why he’s fresher than Match of the Day

There is a lot more to Mark Goldbridge than rage but, still, I’m harbouring a fond hope, as I’m led through the corridors of the studio complex on the south side of Manchester to meet him, that I might glance through an open door, see him pounding his fists on a desk and screaming ‘useless b****rds’ at a screen. I’m hoping for a personal highlight I can add to The Ultimate Mark Goldbridge Meltdown Collection.

I love the rage and I love the delivery of the rage. I know Manchester City fans who love the rage, too, because it lets them laugh at Manchester United. 

I know United fans who love the rage because it’s the kind of unfiltered emotion they feel when they’re sitting in the pub watching their team lurching through another of the under-achieving seasons they’ve endured since Sir Alex Ferguson left.

‘Like a bunch of bloody traffic cones,’ Goldbridge said, with furious, demagogic anger, as he tore into the Manchester United defence during their 7-0 Premier League defeat to Liverpool in March 2023. 

‘Someone call the police. We’ve got some traffic cones you’ve left out at Anfield. Static, useless k***heads… my eyes are bleached …I can’t speak.’

At the studios, it is the day after United have drawn against bottom-of-the-table Fulham. 

‘The context of the draw was s**t,’ Goldbridge has said on The United Stand, his most famous YouTube channel, the evening before. ‘It was s**t. The subs were s**t. The starting XI was s**t. The tactics were s**t. The energy was s**t. It’s the worst start to a season since (David) Moyes. It’s dreadful.’

But the 18 hours since the game ended is a long time in football’s media cycle now. Things move fast in football-land. 

Goldbridge has just finished filming the latest episode of Stick to United, the new show he shares with Wayne Rooney. They have been discussing whether Michael Carrick is going to survive as manager until Christmas.

Goldbridge has become famous for his compelling and often amusing rants as United have stumbled from embarrassment to embarrassment in the post-Sir Alex Ferguson era

Rooney, who is establishing himself as a fine pundit across a variety of platforms, is walking out of the green room with his agent, Paul Stretford. We exchange a few pleasantries and they leave. 

Goldbridge hangs back. No rage here. He is disappointingly measured and thoughtful. He is a workaholic, too. He apologises and says he has to submit to some publicity shots. He will be back soon.

Goldbridge is busier, and more successful, than ever. If you don’t know him, you ought to. The United Stand has 2.3million subscribers. Goldbridge grew it by pioneering the watchalong medium of football entertainment that involves viewers watching him watch a United match for two hours. Often, they are waiting for him to collapse in apoplexy at the team’s failings. Which, invariably, he does.

If it sounds like a simple concept, it is. But Goldbridge is very, very good at making it work. His numbers are astonishing. More than 950,000 people saw the watchalong of the Fulham game. He gets 35m views a month on YouTube.

The United Stand is the largest independent fan channel by a distance. It outstrips AFTV, formerly Arsenal Fan TV, and the biggest Liverpool channel, Redmen TV. It was bought for a seven-figure sum, along with Goldbridge’s other channel That’s Football some months ago by The Overlap, the media company owned by Gary Neville.

For two hours, Goldbridge alone holds his audience as he describes the game unfolding in front of him, responds to online comments from subscribers, berates the players, the Glazers, Gary Lineker and anyone else who springs to mind and talks about life and history.

Some see echoes of Alan Partridge. There are moments of unintentional comedy that are priceless. He is a compelling mix of Steve Rider and Basil Fawlty. Sometimes urbane, fluent and intelligent, sometimes Joe 90, sometimes intense, sometimes unhinged.

If you park the snobbery, the reality is that Goldbridge is both an accomplished broadcaster and a gifted media entrepreneur who instinctively identified with the emotional incontinence of English football fans and became an expert at articulating their frustrations. In the fast-evolving landscape of football broadcasting, he has become one of the leading players.

If you park the snobbery, the reality is that Goldbridge is both an accomplished broadcaster and a gifted media entrepreneur who identified with the emotional incontinence of English football fans

He now also hosts Stick to United, where he talks about Manchester United with Wayne Rooney

So I sit in the green room and replay some favourite Goldbridge soliloquies in my mind. This was from when United beat Sabah 4-0 in the Champions League a couple of weeks ago when Bruno Fernandes scored the second goal.

It starts with solemnity infusing Goldbridge’s voice but its genius is in the seamless transition to triumphalism. 

‘Shout out to Zach who is being put to sleep tomorrow,’ Goldbridge begins. ‘So sad when you lose your dog, but there’s something very humane about having the ability to put a loved one to sleep. A pet. I’m not talking about a human being. You can do that in Switzerland apparently.

‘At least you can let them go without suffering. We had a dog and she was old and fitting and in distress so we had her put down… Bruuuunoo 2-0… Lovely goal. That was how you do it. Well, he’s probably put Sabah down there. There’s no coming back from that.’

That’s the stuff that gets ‘clipped up’ and is lionised on social media. But it takes a singular talent to talk as fluently and cogently as Goldbridge does for so long, drawing in elements of the chat that he can see on his screen, and keeping the broadcast flowing.

The deal with The Overlap has propelled him into a new stage in his career. The watchalong is still the main vehicle for his talent but Stick to United is a showcase for his wider, more sober, broadcasting ability. 

Goldbridge is moving up the food chain. He has worked hard for it. It is a long time since he started with Google Hangouts, watched by 16 people, in the front room of his house in the Acocks Green area of Birmingham.

‘For a number of years,’ Goldbridge says, as we sit in the studio where he’s just been filming with Rooney, ‘I felt that what we are doing would be replicated by the mainstream media. It was always going to be the people who adapted quickest that would have the most success. And we’re probably sitting in a place at these studios now where we are doing that.

‘When you look at something like Match of the Day, it’s very late on a Saturday. Most people have already seen those highlights. And the segments in between the highlights are small. 

‘It was s**t. The subs were s**t. The starting 11 was s**t. The tactics were s**t,’ was Goldbridge’s take on United’s draw with Fulham 

‘I did feel I wanted to come into it a little bit like Liam Gallagher in a sense that you’re not here to make friends, you’re here to mix things up’

‘Monday Night Football on Sky is interesting because there’s a lot of time to talk. That’s good content. A written piece in a newspaper or on a website that’s in-depth, that’s interesting as well.

‘But everybody is chasing speed now. That’s where the new world is heading. How can you be quick but interesting? And I suppose that’s the skill. It’s about evolving the established media.

‘The mistake the mainstream make is they go, “Oh, we need fan content.” And then they just go and grab any old fan content. It’s almost like they’re following a piece of legislation: “We must get a fan involved.”’

So we sit in the studio and talk about his rise since The United Stand began in 2014, originally as SoccerBox TV, and whether there was one viral moment that was critical in propelling him to this point or whether it was a series of staging posts.

‘There definitely are people in the space that I operate in that have had that one moment,’ Goldbridge says. ‘There was a famous Andy Tate clip from outside Old Trafford where he was like, “Give it to Giggsy until the end of the season” or something. AFTV had all their WengerOut stuff.

‘But for us, the answer is probably “no”. It’s been quite a steady, organic growth. There was a moment where Phil Jones missed a penalty in a shootout when he was wearing pink boots and I said on the watchalong, “You look like a tin of salmon, you bloody idiot”. And that fired the imagination at the time.

‘Because I’m a ’90s kid, the thing that really impressed me was the Oasis step into New Labour and the breaking of the establishment. That’s sort of what I wanted to do.

‘I grew up with Match of the Day and it’s very scripted. It’s a lot better now than it used to be, but I spent a lot of time on forums like 606 where you could go on and write an article about loving Roy Keane because he had just punched Jason McAteer and you might wait an hour for someone to reply. Whereas in the modern world on YouTube, you can just do a video and have a live community there.

‘We all have a performative element to us,’ Goldbridge says, ‘even if it’s just going round to the in-laws on a Sunday when you don’t want to be there’

Goldbridge differentiates himself from Arsenal Fan TV, who became successful in large part thanks to their post-match videos at the Emirates Stadium

‘So I did feel I wanted to come into it a little bit like Liam Gallagher in a sense that you’re not here to make friends, you’re here to mix things up. And I burned a lot of bridges. I slated a lot of journalists. I’ve probably quote-tweeted you and said, “What the hell are you talking about?”.

‘I used to love Sunday Supplement on Sky, where the journalists sat around arguing about football. I’d watch that religiously. And I probably wanted to be a commentator as well. And for whatever reason, I didn’t do very well at school. I didn’t do A-levels, but football was always the thing I was passionate about.

‘I’d play football in my living room and we had a mirror in the hall. If no one was in the house, I played living-room football and then I’d go in front of the mirror and do a little match reaction. So I had this ability to be creative and play in my own head. I don’t know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing.

‘Me and a lad from school would exchange cassette tapes and do commentaries on games. And I was always impressed with my friend because he’d do the commentary, but then he had a separate track playing at the same time where he’d done crowd noise. People go, “Wow, this is really weird”.’

Identifying rivals is more complicated in the modern broadcasting landscape than it was when Grandstand was up against World of Sport in the days when our viewing was limited to a few channels on terrestrial television but Goldbridge has set his sights higher and higher.

‘In the early days, I’d measure us against any of the Man United YouTube channels. Then we moved on to Arsenal Fan TV, Redmen TV, and wanting to be better than them. We became bigger than them quite a few years ago now.

‘And then I was looking at the mainstream and saying to myself, “Well, I don’t think Sky are talking about football in this way, I don’t think Match of the Day are either.” And then you get things like The Overlap that start coming into our world, a literal overlap.

‘I don’t like being compared to AFTV because they’re very much outside the ground. They’re successful at it. We dabbled with it but we found that sometimes you’d get people that were almost slapping themselves around the face, ready to come on and rant about something.  

‘It’s the worst start to a season since David Moyes. It’s dreadful,’ says Goldbridge of Michael Carrick’s teams efforts so far this campaign

Goldbridge with fellow world-famous football influencer IShowSpeed

‘So, it’s quite formulaic in that sense. As much as I respect Arsenal Fan TV, it isn’t what we do.

‘We innovated the watchalong which is one person watching a game with a live community. Sky tried to do a “Fan Duel” or something but I just really liked the idea of live because it was always about real opinion, and there’s nothing more real than having a live conversation. You can’t script it because if somebody asks a good question and you keep ignoring it, then it’s not authentic, is it?’

Authenticity is a theme that Goldbridge keeps coming back to. There is an element of performance about his show, of course, but many of our jobs involve performance. Teachers perform. Anyone who pulls on a uniform, as Goldbridge once did when he was a policeman, is committing to playing a role.

Goldbridge shies away from too many questions about his past. There is no secret about the fact that his real name is Brent di Cesare and that he adopted ‘Mark Goldbridge’ as a nom de guerre.

He is popular enough to have spawned a host of conspiracy theories. Some claim he is a Nottingham Forest fan. He is not. He grew up with a United-supporting granddad, watching old VHS tapes of Duncan Edwards and George Best. He has visited Edwards’ grave in Dudley.

‘We all have a performative element to us,’ Goldbridge says, ‘even if it’s just going round to the in-laws on a Sunday when you don’t want to be there. 

‘A lot of people say to me, “You’re not like what you are on camera”. And I’m like, “How would that be possible? How can you generate two hours that is driven by a passion for 12 hours a day? You can’t do it”.

‘So yeah, there’s a 100 per cent click the live button, “Hello everybody and welcome”. And it’s almost a change in my voice when I go live because it’s like more energy, more oxygen, more, “That’s a load of rubbish”. At the end of the day, I’m there to entertain people.’

Since The Overlap bought his channels, some of his devotees have accused him of selling out. Abuse is the lingua franca of social media and Goldbridge gets his fair share. It fits that nihilistic narrative to suggest Goldbridge is now Neville’s puppet, neutered, and unable to criticise United in the way he once did.

‘(People at the club) probably don’t like what we do, but I don’t like what they’re doing either,’ says Goldbridge of the likes of United co-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe, chief executive officer Omar Berrada and director of football Jason Wilcox

‘United is being run by people who shouldn’t have the club. They put it into debt. They’ve never put any of their own money in it,’ says Goldbridge

I don’t see that. As far as I understand it, the club regard Goldbridge as something akin to the Antichrist. He is their worst nightmare partly because of the virulence of his criticism, partly because he is outside their control. They cannot threaten him because they have nothing to threaten him with.

‘I’d say it’s a healthy relationship,’ Goldbridge says of his interaction with the club. ‘They’d probably say something very different. To sit and be positive about Manchester United at the moment would be very untrue.

‘It’s been run by people who shouldn’t have the club. They put it into debt. They’ve never put any of their own money in it. Old Trafford’s going to get knocked down. We haven’t been near a title in 13 years. The spend gets less. Lots of people have been sacked. The season-ticket holders this season have been treated badly, prices are going up.

‘So there’s a massive list as to why they should be held accountable. So if they’re saying, “Well, you’re not going to get an interview with a player” or “You’re not going to be in a press conference” or whatever, I’d say I’m probably doing my job. They probably don’t like what we do, but I don’t like what they’re doing either.’

Maybe Goldbridge appeals to so many because he says what we are thinking but what we can’t say. It’s his point of difference from commentators and analysts on mainstream channels. He does not mention Lineker by name but he alludes to the line some broadcasters walk now as they juggle appearances on diverging platforms.

‘There was a tournament recently,’ Goldbridge says, ‘where there was a panel on a mainstream channel and then they’d do their own podcast afterwards. On the mainstream channel, they’d say, “OK, that was a great game for England. They could have done a little bit better, but hopefully they’ll be better next time”. End of show.

‘Then they start the podcast. And the same people are saying “What a load of f***ing s**t that was”. And it’s like the same people who are polished for the mainstream and can’t say things, but as soon as you get them on their own private podcast, “Oh, he was rubbish. He was s**t”.

‘I don’t want to use the word “fake”, but I suppose it is. It exposes the lie then, doesn’t it? Because the person we see in front of the camera actually isn’t that person or doesn’t want to be that person, but has to be that person. So then when they tell you something on there, you’re sort of like: “Do they really think that?”’

‘It was always going to be the people who adapted quickest that would have the most success. And we’re probably sitting in a place at these studios now where we are doing that’

‘But if I can make people laugh, I’m really proud of that because I don’t think I’m funny’

Goldbridge never leaves his own viewers in any doubt about what he thinks. The only nuance comes with his ability to make people laugh. 

He insists any humour in his watchalongs is unintentional. He cites one instance, in particular, that mystifies him, a juxtaposition of a discussion about online hate and dismay about an unfolding United defeat by Crystal Palace.

‘I mean, I’ve had people saying I got sacked from a police force in a country I never even worked in,’ Goldbridge says on the broadcast. ‘I’ve had people saying I’ve been noncing kids and all sorts. Three-nil to Palace. But the bottom line is I don’t give a s**t about any of that. The bottom line is it’s 3-0 to Palace and we’re f***ing s**t.’

Goldbridge relates the story and says he is still puzzled by it. ‘I don’t get why that’s funny,’ he says. 

‘But if I can make people laugh, I’m really proud of that because I don’t think I’m funny. I’m very proud of it, because who doesn’t want to make people laugh?’