Who knows, really! But what irks me is the tone adopted on some of the broad sheets.

Let’s consider this from the Telegraph with the headline: ‘I will not stay with United, says Vidic’ Here are the quotes:

“I will never stay to live in England, that’s for sure. You get only a brief glimpse of sunlight before it’s all cloudy again. The winters are mild, but in summer the temperatures seldom go higher than 20C. And it rains, rains, rains.
In future, I would like to test myself in another top league. I’m thinking of Spain. At least there will be no reason to complain about the weather. In England, they say that Manchester is the city of rain. Its main attraction is considered to be the timetable at the railway station, where trains leave for other, less rainy cities. It’s not only the weather that I’m not happy about here. In Russia and Serbia the people’s way of life is similar. In England it’s totally different. Here they just don’t have time to feel the joy of life. Throughout the week they all work so hard. They only talk to people at lunch break. Then in the evening they come home and watch the telly, so they can get up early for work the next day. The only time to meet friends is at weekends, but for football players it’s the busiest time of all. It was much easier for me to adapt to Russia than England. In England I had no one to talk to. The first month was especially hard. I lived alone in a hotel, which I left only for training. I thought I would go crazy inside those four walls.”

Right, so the Serbs now think the English weather to be unbearable. What tomorrow? Fish finding it difficult to breathe in water? A baby finding it difficult to cry? Robots finding it difficult to add two and two?

But that said, it is perfectly understandable for overseas players to find the British weather inhospitable. But him publicly speaking about his desire to play in Spain seems a little daft, considering the pain our club was put through during the summer. It’s not that he shouldn’t be honest about what he’d like. But the timing seems poor. Our next investment, it would seem, would be to buy one PR bloke for each player.

But it must be a lonely life for a footballer these days eh? They have to go for training daily, then come back home tired and work on weekends playing those games when the whole world is watching. All they have would be a few days in an Olympic sized pool with a host of women ready to plunge themselves onto their fairly adequate bodies. And perhaps, for the speed crazed ones, a Bentley to let them while the time and get by with life.

Add to that the dreary weather of Manchester, it must surely be hellish life for a footballer, no?

Meanwhile, a young Brazilian — who should be alerting the scouts of Real Madrid so that they can come circling when he becomes a star — was in the news yesterday as he scored a cracker of a goal against Chelsea reserves. United reserves sealed a come from behind 2-2 draw, thus maintaining Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s unbeaten streak. Man United youth have a good match report, as always. But if you are interested in the goal, then sit back and watch below: (RSS feed readers, click through to watch the video)

And finally, the Berbatov saga rumbles on as I yawn my Berbayawns. Tottenham have apparently agreed to sign Roman Pavlyuchenko with only paperwork needed. It’s not sure if he’s a replacement for Keane or Berbatov. But either way, he would be better than Darren Bent, surely?

Daniel Levy seems to like dicking around. So we’ll have to continue to wait. Or perhaps, yawn?

Sir Alex, shorn of his star wingers decided to push Evra onto the wing with O’Shea providing protection at the back. Brown continued to be preferred over Neville, and Ferdinand got to skipper the side again, in the absence of Ryan Giggs. A patched up midfield that consisted of Evra, Scholes, Anderson and Fletcher was always going to spring some doubts. But once the game got underway, things changed.

The movement was good, the passing crisp, and the desire very much in evidence. Patrice Evra was a revelation on the wing, and played a blinder of a match. Thanks to his surges down the left, we never really missed a genuine left winger.

Anderson showed amazing powers of recovery as he played very well considering his late, late arrival from Beijing. He was off the pace for a while before sort of coming into his own. An excellent pass to Rooney in the last few minutes of the first half was a case in point.

Wayne Rooney looked like he was making a genuine effort to stay further up the pitch. He had two outstanding situations to get on the score sheet. One occasion was as mentioned above; receiving a pass from Anderson, he took a touch, turned and shot a belter that beat James and just wide off the post. The other occasion was when he was wrongly judged offside that could have put the game beyond any doubt.

In all the performance was encouraging. Scholes continued to pull strings as his wont. Fletcher made up for his limitations technically with his tireless running, and his forays into the box fetched him his second goal in as many games. The defence was as solid as you can get. Rodrigo Possebon, who came on later, betrayed his lack of experience while continuing to look promising. And Carlos Tevez, while showing us what we missed last week, continued to impress.

Our lack of a target man was again obvious, but hopefully Berbatov’s arrival (if it happens) will seek to solve it. Next up, the UEFA Super Cup on Friday. Nani would be back. Hargreaves could feature on the bench. Park could return. And Anderson should be able to get over his jet lag.

Come Anfield, we should have a full squad to choose from, barring Ronaldo. And, hopefully, a win against Zenit could help give us the boost that’s needed to kick our campaign into the next gear — ahead of testing trips at Anfield and Stamford Bridge.

We must consider our chances of getting a result this time better. We have Rooney partnering Tevez this time which is always better than what we had against Newcastle. But more importantly, we are facing an abject looking Portsmouth team.

Of course, I do realise that I may have tempted fate by calling Pompey abject. David James might suddenly become as good as Casillas or Buffon and so, like the cliche goes, an early goal will surely help settle the nerves.

In team news, Owen Hargreaves, Park Ji-Sung are still in training while Nani is still smarting from the consequences of his bird brained head butt against West Ham last season. I wouldn’t know Louis Saha’s injury situation, so it would be a bonus if he ever featured on the bench. Carrick and Giggs are out after picking up injuries last week.

We seem short of options on the wing. So it would be really interesting to see who Fergie decides to play on the wing. Whilst it might be tempting for the gaffer to persist with Fletcher on the right like last week — although he doesn’t offer much over there — I’d hope he plays him in the middle of the park instead, alongside Scholes. I am sure a lot of people may be clamouring for the inclusion of Rodrigo Possebon in the middle, but plunging him into the deep end against a very physical midfield, away from home — when we are already doing a bit of catching up — would not necessarily be a wise thing to do. We have Anderson returning, so we could see him making the bench if he’s in the frame of mind. I suspect one of the Brazilian twins will be played on the wings. Raphael might start on the right. I honestly don’t know who’ll play on the left so we may as well throw Fabio in to the mix. The defence seems settled, but there is a chance Gary Neville might earn his first start of the season.

In some positives to take, going into today’s game, Chelsea returned to their usual disjointed snore fest style of football against a willing Wigan side. They got the result they wanted nonetheless, but it also shows the kind of team Pompey were last week. It’s just a thought — not something I’d want to read too much into as the season’s just gotten underway. Winning today could propel us into third spot behind Chelsea and (oh-my-God!) Liverpool.

Prediction: 2-1 to United.

* * *

Customary Berbatov Update:
Nothing for certain yet, but it looks more and more likely that Berbatov is not in people’s good books at Spurs. And I can understand Spurs fans feelings with the way Berba’s treated them. For all Ronaldo’s faults I am pretty sure he wouldn’t be throwing the sort of tantrums Berba seems to be throwing at White Hart Lane. We’ve had parallels, in the cases of Gareth Barry and Adebayor, already this summer, but Berbatov still looks the most likely of the three to actually move.

I would be surprised if he stayed in Spurs beyond August 31.

I was curious, so I looked up Wikipedia and did my research about this player — because, you know, it’s always good to get your facts right about lesser known players. I found out that he’s got great pace and can get past defenders with ease. He also scored 42 goals last season and played three months carrying an injury. So he must be some player.

So this some player has returned to light training and concentrated on jogging all week.

Oh.

The Sun put up pictures referring to his appearance as ‘grim’ whilst Rio Ferdinand, Wayne Rooney, John O’Shea and Louis Saha were all laughing. I mean, what training ground sees only a certain set of players laughing while a few others don’t join in the laughter? It’s a team game, where everyone laughs in unison (and turn glum in unison) at the count of three, no?

Seriously though, my only question after reading that article was, what the hell is Louis Saha doing laughing his arse off in training? What if — as opposed to regular folk — his arse actually falls off, thus ramping up our medical bills further?

Pertinent questions, one would suspect. Think about it.

Meanwhile all the optimism and positive energy that Fergie exuded last week has all but evaporated when he admitted that he was less optimistic about signing a striker.

“I’m feeling less optimistic right now. We are looking at something, but if it doesn’t come off then we will carry on as we are.”

So there you go. Fantastic news. We will have the same team that won us the double last year. Hmm… not a bad squad to have but when you think you are just one signing away from having a side that can continue to be challenging on all fronts then it’s less than comforting to see the way we have done business this summer.

We need an out and out striker who can play maybe from the game following Portsmouth, ideally. If we don’t then I would tend to think it to be a bad summer in terms of transfer business.

In better news, at least some of our players, who had gone out, are returning in one piece. Anderson will be back in the weekend, Tevez will be back after being involved in a friendly with Argentina. Ji-Sung Park is making good progress whilst Hargreaves and Giggs could make it back for training this week.

So in short, it looks like Tevez will surely make it for Pompey. I think I’ll take that. It’s a good thing our game is on Monday although we travel to Monaco for the Super Cup game against Zenit on the 29th. I would love for our lads to win that trophy, and I think it will be more an opportunity for the likes of Anderson and Nani to get their first real competitive first team action. Perhaps, Fergie might throw in the Brazilians if we do manage a couple of early goals.

As an aside, Zenit, who we will be facing in the Super Cup, will be without Arshavin to avoid risking injury so that he could move to Spurs. Could that lead them to selling Berbatov to us?

Hope springs eternal.

Excuse me for a moment.

Hahahahahaha!

Ahem. Ok.

Now I don’t know what’s so funny but I can’t help but laugh at this transfer. Mikael Silvestre has passed up on a chance to get a testimonial next season and the chance to leave on a free to favour a move to Arsenal. So he will move from playing for the United reserves, to sitting on the Arsenal bench — which is an upgrade. You can’t blame him for that, really. Also I’d be shocked if he got a testimonial.

As a player, he’s always made my heart skip a beat with the ball at his feet. His terrible marking in a corner where he let Gallas score the opening goal for Chelsea in that puke inducing 3-0 hammering at Stamford Bridge in the 05/06 season remains fresh in the head. I can’t fault his attitude toward the club though. And I am fairly certain tears wouldn’t be shed at this move anyway.

But two things were laugh worthy. First, the Gooner reaction. Just yesterday, when they got wind of the Silvestre deal being an imminent possibility, Arseblogger (of Arseblog) had this to say:

I have these strange and weird dreams that make no kind of sense to me at all. Vivid motion picture dreams but at the same time I’m convinced that I’m not asleep. It’s all terribly confusing. I mean, last night I dreamt that we were about to sign Mikael Silvestre from Manchester United.

The fish-faced, Freddie Ljungberg head-butting cunt from Manchester United. I must be eating too much cheese before bed time. Still, it’s good to have a cup of coffee in front of me, open up my browser and check the morning news to get a good, healthy dose of reality.

Oh.

I’m really not sure how to feel about this. On one hand Silvestre is an experienced defender, he’s won titles, played many times for France and would provide better cover at left back than Armand Traore who could then go out on loan and get experience. On the other hand he’s a poxy fucking cunt who can’t seem to close his mouth. Why would we want to sign a player who can’t close his mouth? Many of his injury problems at United have come from swallowing insects as he runs along with his big open gob. I mean, look at him. He was once out for three months when a bee went right down his throat like Luke Skywalker’s bomb in the first Star Wars and stung him on the Adam’s Apple.

Read that piece. It’s hilarious, and in between the hilarity, it reveals the conflict many Arsenal fans will feel about this signing.

The second laugh worthy bit is Arsene Wenger’s thoughts on Silly:

“We have a strong squad but a young squad and Mikaël’s versatility, experience and calibre will provide the extra depth we need to reinforce our challenge for honours this season. His defensive adaptability will serve us well and it’s a big plus that Mikaël has top-level experience and a great understanding of football in the Premier League.”

He actually said all that about Silvestre with a straight face.

Seriously though, he will add some depth to their squad. Good for them. I will bid good bye to him.

Meanwhile Wes Brown expressed shock at Silly’s move. Also, apparently, with a straight face.

In other news, everyone is carrying Berbatov signs for United in their headlines in the hope that they get a little bit of the Newsnow action — when, in reality, he signed an autograph on a Manchester United shirt. Cheeky stuff.

And that’s about it for the day. Oh, and England drew luckily for them and I can’t give a toss to be honest.

“God, don’t we all just want Daniel Levy to fuck off? I mean, I can’t see why he doesn’t just accept defeat and sell us Berbatov. He knows he’s going to have to eventually anyway, so he should just get it over with now so we can all get on with our lives. And that tapping-up complaint he filed is a load of shit. By the time he gets his head out of his arse, we’ll be five points off the pace. He is behaving unprofessionally and generally like a cock, and I hate him.”

Do you agree with the above? Then you must be a blinkered United fan like me, because any objective (or for that matter, and other type of) observer should have nothing but praise for Levy’s actions.

Spurs have seemed the most likely entrants into the elite Top 4 Club for the last few years, and barring a dodgy lasagne they would probably have consigned Arsenal to a season in the UEFA Cup. They are now routinely signing some of the best young talent both from the UK and abroad, along with some shrewd purchases of more experienced players. Bale, Woodgate, Hutton, Bentley, Zokora, Bent (admittedly at a hugely inflated price), dos Santos, Modric and, or course, Berbatov have been added to home-grown talent like King, Lennon and Huddlestone. It’s an impressive squad, albeit one whose last eighteen months have been characterised by underachievement.

Until they secure the sacred Champions League place, many of their players will harbour higher ambitions. And the top 4 will see their closest rival as an obvious place to go to pick up Premiership-proven talent, because it should be easier to buy from within the PL than from top continental sides. However, to sustain a challenge for membership of the elite, Spurs need to keep broadly the same squad together for a handful of seasons, so they can grow as a team. At the moment, much to the delight of United and co, they are in danger of becoming a feeder club.

So Levy’s behaviour during this intensely tedious and drawn-out saga is entirely in Spurs’ best interests. In the short term, he will secure an above-market price for a player who has mentally already left the building, funding further investment in the current squad. But more importantly, in the long term he has sent a clear message for the January window and beyond:

“I can’t stop you bidding for our players, but if you want to sign one of our stars then be prepared for us to make the transfer more miserable, disruptive, drawn-out, inconvenient and expensive than you could imagine. If you think you can come over here, tickle our tummies and take the players we scouted and we bedded into the Premiership and do so without a fight, you’re very much mistaken. Now fuck off before I report you to the FA for something.”

And who can blame him. We picked off Carrick two seasons ago, Berba is still (I believe) almost certain to follow; only the da Silva twins will deter us from tracking Hutton and Bale; and we’d probably have tried to sign Lennon already if he could stay fit for more than two games in a row. That sort of interest inevitably leads to cordial relations souring - think of PSV, who provided us with Jaap Stam, Ruud and Park, but have since made it clear that we’re not really welcome anymore, evidenced by our failure to secure players like Arjen Robben.

Robbie Keane, incidentally, is an exception to the rule. For one thing, Liverpool paid way too much for him - he may only be 28, but he is a big gamble for that amount of money. Also, he has been with Spurs through thick and thin since 2002, and nobody at Spurs could deny him a shot at the Champions League before he is too old. It would be comparable to Ole asking us for a transfer a year before his injury - we’d have hated to see him go, but he’d have gone with our blessing.

Berbatov, on the other hand, took four months of his first season to settle in, had a purple patch, immediately started agitating for a move, and then sulked for a while when he didn’t get it. Spurs are treating him with just the same loyalty as he has treated them. So whilst, as a United fan, I subscribe to all the views I started the article with, as a follower of football I think Levy has it spot on.

Oh, and I got all the way through without drawing a comparison with Ronaldo - it would have been too easy.

Whilst it would be tempting for someone to pursue alternative targets, there is very little world class talent available to us to fill that void of a target man who can stay fit for a certain period of time. So while we continue to do, what seems like, a rather accurate version of Waiting for Godot — with regard to our striker situation — let’s cover some other nuggets of Manchester United news.

Owen Hargreaves says he’ll be 100% fit when he returns. Apparently he was only 60% for most of the games he played in last season. If he devoured Man City at Eastlands, and Roma at home by playing at 60%, then at 100%, he’ll be a monster. Let’s hope it all falls into place for him.

There are reports of a new 10m deal with a Saudi Teleom giant. But other than that, this has been a rather boring day of nothingness.

So I will leave you all to dwell on the beauty that is the nothingness.

Cheerio!

On a day when Chelsea thumped a piss poor Pompey, it’s sad when the only good thing one can report was Aston Villa’s dismantling of City. Personally the day was made worse when I found, to my horror, that I am #121 out of the #173 members that had signed up for the RR Fantasy League.

Many United fans have been quick to laugh off claims that Chelsea are among the favourites for the title this season. It would be foolish to write off the Blues, but not because they are playing earth shattering football, but because we lack some key components that will make a big difference to our side.

Ronaldo is not the key component, though. He is an important player, without doubt, but we are more than that. It would be cowardly to hide behind the oft stated injury excuse too. But any team, shorn of so many players will struggle. And a poor pre-season, where we couldn’t play with anything approaching our preferred starting XI partly exposed some obvious flaws in our preparation for the new season. The absence of Carlos Tevez (who had to leave due to a family bereavement) exposed those flaws.

The team started off brightly with neat and crisp passing, and had Rooney’s pin point cross with the outside of his foot (that Campbell met with his head) gone in, then we’d have been in a different mood today. But it hit the head of Shay Given rather than the ‘keeper attempting to stop it, and instead, it was the Barcodes that took the lead off a corner. Again the corner, prior to Newcastle’s goal, was not dealt with properly, with EVDS looking suspect dealing with a high ball.

To be really honest, United’s goal appeared out of the blue because, for all our superior possession, I couldn’t really see where we were going to get a goal. Steve Taylor was off the pitch briefly and we took advantage of the centre back’s absence (and a brief period of indecision in the Newcastle box) to sneak in a goal through Fletcher.

The second half saw an even more dire performance. True, Michael Carrick and Ryan Giggs — who were among the better performers on the day — limped off and the enforced substitutes were either incompetent (John O’Shea) or were too inexperienced (Possebon and da Silva) and too late to make any sort of an impression to affect the proceedings. But the team seemed incapable of moving the ball even into the box leave alone creating chances. Rafael da Silva was brought on far too late and saw too little of the ball. Although his run did see him get felled on the edge of the area. But it was a case of too little too late.

We were poor, and we hardly gave the visitors’ defence anything to worry about. And considering they had they 5974th defensive pairing in the last couple of years, they should have been tested more than they actually were. Rooney picked up a needless yellow card and he’ll have to rein in some of that temper if he plans to avoid early showers in this new Respect-themed Premier League season.

So are there positives to take from today? Well, thanks to the seven subs rule we could blood some youngsters into the team. Rodrigo Possebon looked very good technically. He looks like a Paul Scholes of the good old days. But yesterday he played like a Carrick of his early United days — more sideway passes than forward. But I will put that down to the fact that it was his Premiership debut and he’s just 19. Decision making will improve with games. Rafael da Silva looked lively on the few seconds that he actually got the ball. But bringing him on in the 85th minute was always going to be asking too much of the lad.

I wasn’t pleased with the way we played yesterday, but if Tevez returns we could certainly win against Portsmouth, who have looked wank the two times we played them in pre-season and against Chelsea. We’d however, have to hope that we sign Berbatov this week and hope he gels in instantly in time for Anfield and Stamford Bridge.

We are definitely title contenders, but we need someone like Berbatov if we have to mount a sustained challenge on all fronts. Let’s not make any pretence about it.

* * *

In other news, speaking of Berbatov, he likened himself to Cantona yesterday as he broke his silence on his intent to ‘follow his dream’.

“I’m now at Tottenham but no one can disagree with me wanting to follow my dream. I’m not angry about the decision of Juande Ramos to name me as a subsitute. I’m not crying. I only show my emotions to my close friends and family. If I had been laughing when I was on the bench, people would say I was an idiot. Eric Cantona never smiled, but I don’t know if anyone ever asked him why he didn’t look happier.”

The Cantona comparison is extremely teasing, not to mention what club is in the back of his mind. The dreams part though, was straight out of the Ronaldo book, don’t you think?

Michael Owen looks like he won’t be playing for the Magpies; interestingly he has never started the season for Newcastle in his three seasons at the club. They’ve made a couple of signings in Coloccini and Jonas Gutierrez whilst we haven’t done much to speak of in the transfer market — apart from keeping hold of Ronaldo and signing Davide Petrucci.

Fergie wants Rooney to score more goals this season. But the bigger news is that Rooney will start. Rooney will partner Tevez up front, and that sight would be a relief. Tevez has been outstanding in pre-season, whilst Rooney has put in double training sessions. So there is a lot we can expect from our front two.

The big talking point, of course, is our lack of potent wingers that can hurt Newcastle. Nani is suspended, Park has just returned to training and Hargreaves remains crocked. That makes our options on the wing limited. This means Ryan Giggs will surely start. It could possibly mean we’ll play a 4-3-3 with Tevez and Giggs played wide and Rooney in front. This would mean, Scholes, Carrick and Fletcher will play in the centre of the park. The defence will consist of Evra, Rio, Vidic and Neville.

The lack of real penetrative wingers calls for moves through the middle of the park. And hopefully we just about get the job done.

Come on you reds!!!

Prediction: 1-0 to United. Tevez to score.

You can put together “great” teams, you can have “great” players, but what elevates a side into the timeless category is weight of achievement. It’s what makes Ferguson the best British manager ever, and Wenger just a worthy sideshow; it’s what makes Giggs one of the best players of all time, and Gerrard a footnote in comparison. It’s why everyone knows exactly what you mean when you say the Treble, why everyone (however grudgingly) acknowledges that as a seminal footballing achievement; it’s why names like Solskjaer and Sheringham appear alongside Schmeichel and Keane in everyone’s dictionary of footballing legends.

This season we can complete a hat-trick of Premiership titles and retain the European Cup. To do either would put this team into that timeless bracket. To do both would make them the best English club side ever.

The Premiership is harder to win than the top division has ever been. The points tallies required for victory demand relentless excellence over the entire season, starting from game one - the second half of the season push for which we became renowned is not good enough any more. Our main rivals have nearly unlimited money to spend, a squad which regularly sits £25m players on the bench and haven’t lost a match at home for two years. The chasing pack contains two teams who would have been good enough to win the league five years ago, featuring some star players who are coveted by every other club in Europe, including ourselves.

The next tier of clubs are more intimidating than ever before, as a combination of TV money, foreign ownership and the availability of cheap overseas talent allows them to build impressive squads of their own, packed with internationals. Anyone who claims that games against Spurs, Portsmouth, Villa, Everton, Man City or Blackburn will be easy is deluded. Even lower down, we are only too well aware of the surprises teams like Middlesbrough can spring.

We’ve won a hat-trick of titles before, but then we were by far the best team, with more money and more pulling power than anyone else, in leagues with ten teams of comparative deadwood who our reserves could and did beat. Whatever the talk of the “Big Four”, it’s the level of competition that would make this our greatest domestic achievement.

The Champions League has never been retained. Not in its current punishing format, with the leagues followed by a rock-hard knockout phase. The Bayern machine couldn’t do it, the galacticos couldn’t do it, the Treble-winners couldn’t do it. There are so many chances to slip up, so many hurdles to fall at. One bad day can be impossible to recover from. Real and Barca are stronger than last season, and as champions everyone will be gunning for us.

We can do it. We can do both of these things. We can be that team. We have a rock-solid defence, a flexible and resourceful central midfield, the world’s best player, two sensational support strikers, (almost certainly) a hyper-talented new centre forward, a deep and well-rounded squad which is both experienced and hungry, with both old heads and young blood.

But the line is thin. Ronaldo is injured to start with, and surely can’t be as good again. Rooney needs to climb again from his plateau, Berbatov needs to settle quickly to give us enough firepower going forward. Nani may be a season away from turning his talent into end product, and age is catching up with Giggs. Our central midfielders need to discover where the net is, and we have no top class cover for Evra. What if Rio or Vidic gets injured, or van der Saar really can’t last another whole season?

After one of the most boring and frustrating summers on record, we are about to leap headlong into our chance to surpass anything our rivals have ever done in their history. Hold your breath, and hope we smiling next May - if we are, history will smile on us.

[Ed's Note: There has been an assumption in the article that Berbatov's expected to join United. So excuse us if that deal falls through -- heaven forbid.]