Football 2010-2011

[eFestivals]

I haven't said it'd be better and right, I've said we'd be financially better. distinguish please!

financially better enough so that you think Rooney should have lied to and misled Utd so that they achieved the best deal?

I'm asking because I'm seeing your anger at Rooney as being about him having lied to and misled Utd, but to a lesser extent.

So it seems somewhat strange, given your huge dislike at his actual doings, that you're suggesting you'd like him more if he did that thing you're disliking so much to a greater extent.

Why cup-tie him?

yep, ooks like that one falls on fergie and JUST fergie.

If Fergie's not telling a white lie as above, perhaps we couldn't other than to English clubs.

As Steve said, it was a short period of time to try and finalise a sale deep into the summer and two days before the start of the season. Add in the fact that Barca has spent their money on Villa and Mascherano and couldn't afford Fabregas, and Madrid on Ozil, Khedira, Di Maria, Carvalho, Pedro Leon, Canales. Milan on robinho, ibra loan etc, perhaps it wasn't possible other than to English clubs.

then the choice of Utd to go for max money has a consequence back on Utd. It's something they've presumably been wise enough to factor in with their deliberations, so have been prepared for and (at the end of the day) happy for this shit to hit the fan, either for the extra millions they think they'll get or for the opportunity to try and change Rooney's mind.

However things actually are (which version to believe?), any finger of 'blame' for the situation points at more than just Rooney.

[Alcatraz]

At the end of the Holloway rant, a reporter asks him:

"Any Injury worries, Ian?"

"No I'm fully fit"

Classic

[ralph250]

I was going from players whose first professional club was Utd who've gone on to forge a career.

The point is that players like Fraizer Campbell get to re-enforce Rooney's view - kids who weren't good enough for Utd, examples of where Utd's youth policy has been a waste of time in making the squad stronger.

Edited October 21, 2010 by ralph250

[ralph250]

financially better enough so that you think Rooney should have lied to and misled Utd so that they achieved the best deal?

Edited October 22, 2010 by ralph250

[ralph250]

At the end of the Holloway rant, a reporter asks him:

"Any Injury worries, Ian?"

"No I'm fully fit"

Classic

[ralph250]

As for the man himself, he should ask the Lech Poznan fans arriving in Manchester on Thursday to watch their team play City in the Europa League if he is leaving for a bigger pond. Apparently, the first thing they did was take a guided tour of Old Trafford.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/players/wayne-rooney/8079090/Sir-Alex-Ferguson-delivers-virtuoso-display-as-Wayne-Rooney-plays-second-fiddle.html

[ralph250]

While Rooney was pondering the fall-out from several hours of high-level talks at Old Trafford, a 40-strong group of United supporters, many wearing balaclavas and hooded tops, had travelled to his home in Prestbury, Cheshire to warn him off any move to Manchester City. Witnesses reported a gathering outside his house, with a banner reading "If you join City you're dead".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/oct/21/wayne-rooney-manchester-united-city

[Steve P]

hoped that we were better than it, but always going to get an element of twats.

[ampersand]

is rooney still the topic of discussion? i'm bored of it all now.

[The Nal]

is rooney still the topic of discussion? i'm bored of it all now.

[ampersand]

What do you want to talk about then? Not football surely?

[Steve P]

Well to continue on your favourite off pitch theme then Ampers, looks like Andy Carrol has upset some nasty people - Carrol's car torched

[The Nal]

Well to continue on your favourite off pitch theme then Ampers, looks like Andy Carrol has upset some nasty people - Carrol's car torched

[eFestivals]

Not everyone's going to breakthrough though. It's massively countered though by the kids that were. the likes of Giggs, Scholes, Neville going far back, then Brown, Fletcher, O'shea going a little back, then Evans etc recently that have made the squad stronger. The new youth coming through might or might not step up, hard to tell until you give them a chance.

Thing is - excluding the kids of '93 (or whenever it was) - they're simply not of the class needed to properly compete. They're more than OK with other better players around them, but the better players from outside Utd are coming in at a slower rate than used to be the case. And via this the squad is slowly weakening.

Rooney can see it too. No different to how Everton didn't match his ambition and caused him to move to Utd, he now regards Utd as similar.

Utd have one of the best records for top level clubs for making the breakthrough and having the requisite quality to stay there.

that might well be true.

But when the Utd squad is put alongside the squads of other teams, those other teams certainly appear at first glance to be hugely stronger, even if the reality isn't really so great.

You have your opinion on those players. Rooney's allowed the same thing, and he doesn't have to agree - with you or Fergie.

yeah but helped their development though.

well, they developed. What can never be known is if it helped: they might have developed more/better elsewhere.

Utd certainly have a decent record with developing young players, but even by your own reckoning very few reach Utd's standard - it probably averages less than one every two years.

Rooney can't see where the other players Utd will need are coming from, and it certainly seems to me (I've not analysed it) that they're buying in fewer finished products of a high standard than they were doing five to ten years back - and if that's actually the case that's going to be effecting squad strength, even if the change in the squad strength is pretty slow.

In the past I'd say that fergie wouldn't have stuck with berba as long as he has. He might not have sold him (he tends to hold onto the big-buy flops, perhaps out of embarrassment) but would have probably gone out and got someone else, because he's not had the hoped-for impact. But this time he didn't - why? Looks like the money issues to me.

[eFestivals]

No, and I've not said that to be honest. I said "better off" and was looking purely at the financial view.

perhaps not explicitly, but what you've been saying (and Nal, and others) has been confused enough for people to take that as your possible meaning - after all, the rants have been about how he's screwed the club over, but you've recognised that by screwing the club over even more, many of the side issues are removed.

So is it his screwing over the club that's what he's done wrong, or not?

As to my dislike, it's that he's aired it now 2 months into the season

Again, I'll point out that perhaps the airing isn't directly down to Rooney, and that Utd had the option and chose not to take it which would have avoided any of this this while knowing that all this was quite possible - and perhaps even very likely.

If he wishes to leave Utd fine, but I would've preferred to have informed them at the close of last season to give enough time for United to satisfy the request. Rooney gets his move, United get good payout, United get time to replace, everyones a winner.

Oh c'mon. A part of your issue is just the fact he wants to move, because he sees somewhere else as a better option. Utd fans like to falsely believe that no one who's there wants to leave.

As for the timing, people can change their mind about something at any point. He's simply looking after himself, no different to how Utd look after themselves in preference to looking after a player - it's not like they (and all clubs) have any problem selling a player against his will.

Utd have no problem encouraging other players to do the same as Rooney, and in fact have been the major doers of it for 10+ years. Now it's happened to them they're getting to discover what it feels like. It's not exactly gaining them sympathy from the majority of fans, unsurprisingly - most are laughing and saying "Ha! Now you know what it feels like".

If Fergie knew, then yeah completely; no guarantees he did though.

so we can conclude that either fergie f**ked up big time, or fergie has no problem telling big porkies. Either way gets him no sympathy from me.

That doesn't mean I approve of Rooney's doings, in an ideal world I'd like all players to honour their contracts. But we have a world where contracts mean very little, and that's a situation that Utd more than most have helped bring about for their own advantage - so when it's turned back on them my response is 'oh well, tough tittie on them'.

At the end of the day Rooney has done little that's wrong on the basis of how Utd operate themselves, and where he has done wrong it's been matched by either similar wrongdoing or just plain stupidity from within Utd.

[funkymp]

Seems the whole JT affair story year was a load of bollocks

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2010/oct/07/newsoftheworld-john-terry

Edited October 22, 2010 by funkymp

[eFestivals]

Seems the whole JT affair story year was a load of bollocks

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2010/oct/07/newsoftheworld-john-terry

Not quite!!!

She's not said they weren't having a relationship of sorts (and in fact has previously pretty much admitted they were), just that they weren't shagging as accused.

It's not a non-story, but it is a story that's been over-stated.

[The Nal]

Seems the whole JT affair story year was a load of bollocks

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2010/oct/07/newsoftheworld-john-terry

[lost]

why when rooney did it to everton, were the press actively encouraging the move but the same situation at man u they are all outraged?

[sifi]

That doesn't mean I approve of Rooney's doings, in an ideal world I'd like all players to honour their contracts.

[ampersand]

He is honoring his contract, isn't he? He's not signing a new one. He's not asked for a transfer request, as far as I can see.

If I was in a contract job, and it was coming up for renewal, I'd be asking what the plans for the department / organisation were, and if I didn't like the answer I heard, I'd look elsewere. What's the difference?

[Wooderson]

why when rooney did it to everton, were the press actively encouraging the move but the same situation at man u they are all outraged?

Edited October 22, 2010 by Wooderson

[eFestivals]

just reading the beebs footie gossip, and it's saying that Rooney has u-turned according to one paper.

My take on Utd's statement last night is that something is imminent to clarify how things stand in the short-term if not the long term. My guess on that is that Rooney will be named in Utd's squad for the weekend, tho I'd take that as Utd merely making use of him till he goes rather than him definitely staying.

[eFestivals]

So .... this weekend's big game.... how's it going to go?

Me, I'm going to plump for Arsenal as they'll have Cesc back, tho with shitty having turned Chelsea over that far from guaranteed.

[funkymp]

Can see City hammering Arsenal, Arsenal seem to always struggle against the big clubs over the last couple of seasons, City will just out muscle them for the whole game.

Edit : If Arsenal do lose, I'd pretty much see that as the nail in their coffin as far as the league is concerned, I can't see them getting any points off Man U or the return game with Chelsea, so unless they go on some crazed unbeaten run between the games against them clubs - can see them just battling it out for 3rd. Know it's early days and all.

Edited October 22, 2010 by funkymp