Frank Ilett: The United Strand & the haircut that went viral
A man and a much awaited adornment.
But for Manchester United it began to feel like Ilett’s long wait for the club to win five games in a row was turning into an unwelcome inconvenience.
There was a time when United were ready to go along with the joke. After all, they included a barber’s room in the £50 million training ground improvement project in Carrington. What better way to have some fun?
But now, publicly and privately, they have nothing to do with it.
Captain Bruno Fernandes and manager Michael Carrick were dismissive when asked about it after their fourth win against Tottenham; but Carrick’s admission that he was told this saga by his children points to a broader draw.
Ilett’s daily social media updates and before and present pictures scattered across the digital space were initially quite entertaining but serve as a reminder of just how poor the team’s form is.
Ilett plans to donate her hair to the Little Princess Foundation and set up a JustGiving page for the children’s cancer charity for those who would like to offer financial support.
The initial fundraising target of £500 for the Little Princess Trust has been significantly exceeded, standing at £6,132 by Tuesday afternoon.
As eye-catching initiatives go, his promise didn’t look so outrageous when he did it.
Eight months earlier, just 11 years after Sir Alex Ferguson’s retirement, United had completed an 11th straight home run, including the end of the 2015-16 season and the start of 2016-17.
The longest gap was on January 25, 2019, when United claimed the last of a run of eight consecutive wins following the arrival of Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, ending a run of five straight wins under the Norwegian in April 2021.
It says much about United’s chronic form that Ilett swears they had only won three in a row twice before Carrick came in, changed the formation and turned his former club into winners once again.
To put this into context, United’s other ‘big six’ club have won five times in recent memory. Arsenal, Manchester City and Liverpool have done this this season; Chelsea have already done that this year.
Even Tottenham, who have been in terrible form for 18 months, managed this at the start of last season when United were one of the teams they beat.
Some fans concluded that they did not like Illet’s humor.
A fan who attacked Ilett during a home match against Chelsea in September 2025 was given an indefinite ban from Old Trafford by United.
Others took exception to the fact that he appeared in an advertisement for a major gambling company and made money as a charitable gesture. Ilett refused to pay sums of the kind referred to.
But many people defended Ilett and the majority of responses to his appearance on the leading Stretford Paddock podcast were positive.
But the vast majority, for and against, want to see an end to this.
