Man United vs Sunderland game was delayed after burst pipe covered players’ clothes in ‘s***’
Manchester United faced a bizarre situation as a burst pipe left the squad in disarray and led to the kick-off being delayed
Jake Bayliss Sport Writer – U35s
05:00, 04 Oct 2025
Sir Alex Ferguson and Steve Bruce were involved in an unusual situation ahead of Manchester United facing Sunderland in 2010(Image: Matthew Peters/Manchester United via Getty Images)
Manchester United endured a nightmare scenario ahead of a stinking performance against Sunderland in October 2010. The club were forced to round up a dressing room full of soiled clothes into bin bags as Sir Alex Ferguson’s side settled for a draw at the Stadium of Light.
Current United boss Ruben Amorim will hope to get his side’s season back on track against the Black Cats on Saturday. However, even Ferguson’s best-laid plans could not have prepared the United squad for what they experienced on Wearside, 15 years ago.
United arrived in the dressing room to find a bucket collecting a drip from the ceiling, but the situation swiftly descended into disaster. Not long after the players had got changed and headed out for their pre-match warm-up, United were informed that the leak had worsened and returned to witness a burst pipe covering the room with excrement.
Luckily, club kit manager Albert Morgan had brought spare kits for the players. Referee Chris Foy delayed the match by 20 minutes as United played out a dull 0-0 draw. Still, there was no salvaging the players’ clothes, with Morgan remembering Dimitar Berbatov’s anger over losing a pair of shoes.
“We’d been out there [warming up] for a few minutes and one of the security guards came and said: ‘Albert, I think you’d better come in the dressing room, that bucket’s getting a bit full,’” Morgan recalled on the UTD podcast in 2020. “By the time we got back in the changing room, the bucket had been changed to a bin.
“Well, we walked in and they had these ceiling tiles, before you could say ‘whip’, one of the ceiling tiles just burst out. S*** everywhere! The gaffer just got out.
(Image: Michael Regan/Getty Images)
“It was all over the suits, the clothes, up the walls, up the ceiling. Berbatov was going mad about his shoes. His shoes had just sunk in three inches of s***.
“You couldn’t save a thing. Everything was gone – shoes, suits. The only thing we could do was go into the lads’ socks and shoes to get the jewellery and watches. This is 10 to three. The game kicks off at three. Shirts are all splattered in s***. They had to put the game back half an hour. All the players were saying I’m not playing in that.”
The awful situation then took a bizarre twist as Sunderland boss and United legend Steve Bruce began cleaning up the mess before kick-off. Morgan described the former United captain arriving on the scene to help Ferguson’s team.
“He came in through a door at the back of the dressing room,” Morgan said. “He had this brush, it must have been 14-foot wide. And there’s big Brucey coming in at the back just shovelling this s*** out of the dressing room. We just put the suits in black bags and destroyed the lot!”
Steve Bruce is claimed to have helped clean up the dressing room(Image: ANDREW YATES/AFP via Getty Images)
Bruce was able to see the funny side, joking that it had all been a deliberate ploy to finally get a win over his old boss. “I’ve been trying for 15 years to beat him and today we even sabotaged the toilets,” the Sunderland manager quipped.
He added: “Alex was very complimentary about us. He didn’t enjoy the toilet trouble he had but he did enjoy the red wine.”
As for Ferguson, the United boss refused to use the incident as an excuse after his team drew for the third time in four league matches. United would soon return to winning ways and eventually won the Premier League title by nine points.
On the Sunderland result, Ferguson said: “It disrupted us a little bit but not much. Did Sunderland play well? You have to give them credit. They have a fantastic record at home and our back four had to be outstanding today. We’ve had some difficult games away from home so far and not losing a goal here was important.”
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