Malcom Glazer is an unpopular figure in England. Elliot J. Schecter/Getty Images
	MAILBAG

I'll be the first to admit that I'm an Anglophile, almost to a fault. I refuse to watch NBC's version of The Office because it pales in comparison to the English original. I just spent an obscene amount of money to have the latest novels by Nick Hornby and John O'Farrell shipped via the British Amazon Web site because I didn't want to wait for them to be released in the U.S. If I met myself at a party, my reaction would be, "Why don't you just shut up about how great the Stone Roses are and move to England already, you Monty Python-loving snobbish geek."

Having said that, I'm not entirely sure what to make of the reaction in Old Blighty to Malcolm Glazer's takeover of Manchester United. The media is beating the old "He's American, therefore he knows nothing about soccer" routine into ground. The Guardian now refers to the team as the MUFC Yankee Soccerballs. That's very clever, if not a little bit of a cliche. (Most Americans don't like soccer; we get it.)

Fans showed up at Old Trafford a few days back to burn Glazer in effigy and chant death threats: "He's going to die, he's going to die/ Malcolm Glazer's going to die/ How I'll kill him I don't know/ cut him up from head to toe/ all I know is Glazer's going to die." (I've got no real problem there, so long as they don't actually burn Glazer himself; you can't fault fans for being rabid about their team's welfare. But again, I've got to stop short of condoning the immolation of another human, no matter how much he looks like James Lipton.)

A group called the Manchester Education Committee issued what amounts to a fatwa, threatening any Glazer who sets foot in England as well as swearing vengeance on anyone who does business with the family. Supposedly, the group has a severed horse's head that it'll send to anyone who raises its ire. (Earlier this year several members of the MEC, dressed in balaclavas and black battle fatigues, staged a pitch invasion at a reserve-team match to protest Glazer's presence.)

All that's well and good, but the one thing that's chapping my backside is the idea Glazer is an ugly American hell-bent on ruining a quaint little national pastime. Not that Glazer isn't an ugly American, mind you. But the idea that English football hasn't been contaminated by big money is absurd. Here's what one reader of The Guardian wrote a few days ago: "A small element [of the English fan base] maybe [sic] xenophobic, but mostly we don't want Glazer because the national sport, already under threat from Roman Abramovich's reckless spending and the FA's uselessness, will be further screwed by someone who's even prepared to take his family to court. While this may suit U.S. sport, where big money talks, we don't want it over here."