How fooking stupid are they then?

And how are they going to recompense their fans, the majority of whom travelled over 300 miles to watch their local team play.

You couldnt have made this shit up.

How stupid would they have been had they not evacuated and it had been real? Stupid security contractors certainly but I don't see that the club dos anything wrong at all. They cleared the ground when a suspected bomb was found.

What would you have expected them to do?

The club worked well, and showed how prepared they are for anything like this.

The contractors on the other hand...

If it was possible for a fake device to be left behind it's possible for a real one to be left behind, surely. By all accounts Man Utd did a good job of evacuating the stadium but such a large venue should have measures in place to account for everything brought in especially something that could cause such alarm.

Obviously it's the security firm's fuckup but if this event has highlighted anything its that vunerabilities still exist.

All seemed rather odd when they first announced the evacuation that only the day before they were preparing for such scenarios in the Trafford centre I believe with fake explosions etc?

Still the club did everything right and looked like it was handled well? Can only be a good thing imo and keep people on there toes.

And are we to presume that with the device being left behind from the trial - that the sniffer dogs never found it during the test?

How do sniffer dogs find fake bombs anyway? I always assumed that it was the explosive materials that the dogs are trained to smell so the fake ones don't have explosives in. No wonder the poor dogs didn't find it. Reinstate the dog!!

The fake device had been there for 4 days. Did none of the hundreds of people that work at Old Trafford not see it? Aat all? during the 4 days?

There are stadium tours at Old Trafford every day.

They obviously don't go in and clean the toilets before the match then

I'm finding this 'fake device' story a little difficult to believe.

Firstly as if a security company would leave a site without accounting for all of it's equipment. That would be scarily incompetent.

I think it's possible that the device was real, or even if it was fake it intended to cause chaos and we're being to fed this story so we don't all go into a state of panic. It was only on the news last week the terror level had been raised and they specifically said the threat was from the IRA. Coincidence?

unless you think the authorties and Man Utd and the security are all in on the ruse?

MI5 and Manchester both start with M. Coincidence? I think not.

Where is lightning tree when you need him.

If it wasn't fake whoever planted it would have claimed responsibility, otherwise it's pointless. It would at least remind people the threat is always there which is what terrorism is all about.

The bomb was a training implement so they increase police presence and get sniffer dogs out for tonights game, what a waste of money, stable door and bolted horse come to mind

Could they not of carried out a controlled explosion of Old Trafford? Could even rebuild it in London or Mumbai to please the majority of fans.

I'm thinking of setting up a firm that checks whether security firms are doing their job properly...

What I do not understand about this is when I was working in security for a major bank, when we had exercises, which is what this was, the devices were boxes marked BOMB, they did not need to be 'totally convincing' as this device was, it was all about finding the devices, ensuring no public access to air con etc.

Why did they need to be realistic enough to convince the bomb squad?

Because it's much harder to teach dogs to read.

The story is they were not picked up by the stadium dog sweep before the match is it had no explosive so no smell, the only smell I smell in this story is a rat.

Why did they have to carry out an actual controlled explosion if it was just a dummy?

Probably a mixture of not knowing for sure at the time and procedure. Always better to be sure than get your bollocks blown off.

Why check under cars arriving today though, it was a fuckin fake

Imagine the embarassment of a device being discovered again.