Is Slur Alex losing the plot?

[Beantown Red]

Glad he didn't retire a few years ago.

[Horus]

Glad he didn't retire a few years ago.

 

Fucking hell. Talk about short-sighted.

[Megadrive Man]

A journalist ahead of his time.

 

I wonder If Slur Al will answer his question now?

[Iceman]

Running away from a question is pathetic and totally unprofessional.

[Ezekiel 25:17]

I hear they're releasing a new Man U xmas fragrance 'Channel no.5'.

[ngogswilly]

I see the Fans have gone back to blaming the Glazers!

 

"Wah! Wah! we didn't spend any money this summer!"

 

So De Gea, Jones and Young were paid with sunshine and happiness were they?

 

The Glazer's have been bleeding them dry for years but only when shit doesn't go there way do they care.

Fucking idiots.

[zigackly]

Wonder whose scarves they will pinch this time.

[LFC64]

ask him this;

 

Sir Alex..I mean Fergie.. would you agree that your cherry picked shower of over hyped over paid shite were a fucking embarrassment in the piss easiest group of the competition ? Or would you like to me to list a few external factors beyond your control for you to use as excuses?

[Major Tom]

I wonder if Ferguson will answer the question the bloke asked last week when he stormed out?

 

The bloke was right. Utd are struggling in Europe this season.

[18-5]

:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

[goatboy59]

There'll always be a hundred others to pick up the slack though.

 

"Ferguson was unusually graceless in defeat"

 

WHAT?

[dave u]

Oooh oooh let me guess. Was it Paddy Crerand??

[Whelan]

Oooh oooh let me guess. Was it Paddy Crerand??

 

You mean Paddy 'Roy Keane has nothing to do with Manchester United' Crerand?

 

I realise we do that, and have been guilty of the same dismissal of uncomfortable ex player truths/opinions, but we have had 20 years of scraps. They have lost one match and turned on the greatest signing that Ferguson has ever made.

[goatboy59]

Tim Rich of the Independent.

 

[Gym Beglin]

I wonder if one of the CL clubs will try for Nani this January? I bet he'd go.

 

De Gea, Jones, Vidic, Ferdinand, Giggs, Nani, Berbatov, Rooney, Hernandez, Young, Fletcher, we're still talking about United having a very good first team on a given day, but Giggs, Ferdinand and Berbatov are soon to go, which begs the question what happens next.

 

The likes of Anderson, Carrick, Evans, Owen, Park, Rafael, Fabio, Cleverly, that are poor options for a top team.

Whereas Valencia, Gibson, Welbeck, I'm still not sure about.

 

I'm genuinely excited about United falling to pieces, and I really don't think Ferguson will stick around to attempt another re-build, which could last 3 years or more, all under the backdrop of City winning the league.

 

Ferguson would kill to have the likes of Henderson and Adam for his midfield, and reports suggested he was sniffing around both of them this Summer before blowing his load on a totally unproven centre back from Blackburn, and a pre-pubescent goalkeeper.

[05 Milan]

Yeah yeah, they're "finsihed", "going to pieces", blah blah blah. Watch them finish above us for years to come.

[Redshadow]

Thing about such predictions 05Milan? They Always end up right in the end - And they do so for a reason to; Remember us back in the day under a succesion of great managers finishing with the man currently in charge? What did the papers/our foes/virtually All of football say about us non-stop without fail after every single defeat? And what happened in the end? I rest my case.

 

Yes, Such predictions can be wrong and laughed at many times by those who hate us and support United but each time? They'll laugh all the more frantically and worriedly - You know why? Because each time brings closer that inevitable moment when the predictions? Turn out to be right, All of them; And this moment is coming for them right now as we type; Yes, It's been on the horizon for years and is taking it's own sweet time about getting here but now Finally & although they should have had it years ago? The Coup De Grace is just about visible on their horizon now; You know why?

 

Well that's Simple - Even they can't defeat inevitability and Nemesis really is finally at hand for them. Last night showed that more clearly than anything else - Hence the subdued manner of their media dogs today - They've seen a world withOUT him & them at the top and it horrifies them. Like I said, destiny has arrived and Nemesis has finally caught up with them at long, long last or if it hasn't? It soon will and they know it to - All of them. The reckoning they've so clearly deserved arrives as well quite clearly in the form of the one enemy Ferguson Can't ever beat, the one that pulled down Our empire in the end and the one thing that deep down? We All (including Them) Knew would get them in the end. Time...........................

 

NB It's funny as fuck as well in a (very twisted) way that the one thing that's enabled them to finally be almost killed as the force they once were is the fact that Ferguson supported their current owners to the hilt - Effectively killing any attempts to oust them at birth and legitimising the rule over them of merchants & shysters 50 times as bad as ours Ever were. And to think they once laughed at us for our ownership troubles in the not to distant past. I wouldn't normally be amused by such a situation in football but they milked it to the full when we so nearly ceased to be last October - Now? It's there turn and There but for the grace of God..................

Edited December 8, 2011 by Redshadow

[andrew78]

Thing about such predictions 05Milan? They Always end up right in the end - And they do so for a reason to; Remember us back in the day under a succesion of great managers finishing with the man currently in charge? What did the papers/our foes/virtually All of football say about us non-stop without fail after every single defeat? And what happened in the end? I rest my case.

 

Yes, Such predictions can be wrong and laughed at many times by those who hate us and support United but each time? They'll laugh all the more frantically and worriedly - You know why? Because each time brings closer that inevitable moment when the predictions? Turn out to be right, All of them; And this moment is coming for them right now as we type; Yes, It's been on the horizon for years and is taking it's own sweet time about getting here but now Finally & although they should have had it years ago? The Coup De Grace is just about visible on their horizon now; You know why?

 

Well that's Simple - Even they can't defeat inevitability and Nemesis really is finally at hand for them. Last night showed that more clearly than anything else - Hence the subdued manner of their media dogs today - They've seen a world withOUT him & them at the top and it horrifies them. Like I said, destiny has arrived and Nemesis has finally caught up with them at long, long last or if it hasn't? It soon will and they know it to - All of them. The reckoning they've so clearly deserved arrives as well quite clearly in the form of the one enemy Ferguson Can't ever beat, the one that pulled down Our empire in the end and the one thing that deep down? We All (including Them) Knew would get them in the end. Time...........................

 

NB It's funny as fuck as well in a (very twisted) way that the one thing that's enabled them to finally be almost killed as the force they once were is the fact that Ferguson supported their current owners to the hilt - Effectively killing any attempts to oust them at birth and legitimising the rule over them of merchants & shysters 50 times as bad as ours Ever were. And to think they once laughed at us for our ownership troubles in the not to distant past. I wouldn't normally be amused by such a situation in football but they milked it to the full when we so nearly ceased to be last October - Now? It's there turn and There but for the grace of God..................

 

I was talking to one of the deluded cunts and ha is a fucking prick,do you know what he said about when the old cunt go,s i said they will never be the force they are with him not there he said it be ok we have robson anderson scholes and giggs around

[xerxes]

This is not a vintage Man U side, and the worst midfield that I can remember since their eighties subjugation by us.

 

He certainly hasn't lost the plot, but replacements for top players like Van der Sar, Scholes, Ronaldo, (an ageing Giggs) do not come off the shelf. With Chelsea and Man City able to trump them on fees and wages, and the South American tap soon to be drastically reduced as the continent floursishes economically, this rebuild will be the most difficult yet for him.

 

Cyclically, fortune, relatively may be against them, but they will still be a "berth-blocker" in the top four.But they are not the force they were, and head to heads with them no longer the odds against task in the big games that they were.

 

Kenny may just have timed his managerial run, as he did his playing runs, just right.

[Funkasy]

BBC Sport - Ferguson laughs off 'struggling in Europe' question

[Section_31]

The mancs' recent achievements have been a testament to Ferguson's abilities as a manager, because their squad has been declining in quality for years. Milan is right though, we always write them off and they always come back. As long as he's there, they'll be there or thereabouts.

[Whelan]

The Cavalary has arrived!

 

Manchester United's Champions League exit betrays unspoken troubles | Daniel Taylor | Football | The Guardian

 

Our mate Daniel!

 

Perhaps it would be less embarrassing for Manchester United if Uefa had not taken a sledgehammer to the original format a few years ago and come up with something that makes you wonder whether the decision-makers in Switzerland ought to go back to the cutting room and start all over again.

 

The Uefa Cup used to be a semi-decent competition where clubs played their strongest teams and it was considered perfectly fine to stage games on the same nights as the European Cup. There was little of the disdain we have now and it was certainly not inferior to the European Cup Winners' Cup, a competition that will always be cherished at Old Trafford.

 

But what we have today, the Europa League, is a strange and unloved place, a convoluted mess in which Fulham qualified this season via fair-play rankings and have been assigned home and away matches against NSI Runavik, Crusaders, RNK Split, FC Dnipro, Twente, Wisla Krakow and Odense, starting on 30 June, just to reach the point where they find out if they have made it to the last 32. At which stage there is a sudden windfall of those teams who have not done well enough to make it into the Champions League's knockout rounds.

 

For Manchester City, there is no getting away from the fact their own demotion is a grave disappointment, but they can at least point out they accumulated 10 points in Group A and that no other team have failed to qualify with that amount since 2007. They were also in a group that featured the four-times winners Bayern Munich, a renascent Napoli and a Villarreal team that finished just a couple of places behind Barcelona and Real Madrid in La Liga last season.

 

But United have no mitigating factors. Basel have qualified for the Champions League's second stage only once before and achieved little else in Europe apart from reaching the final of another Uefa creation, the Intertoto Cup, in 2002. The days are gone when Benfica counted as a genuine force and Ferguson cheerfully admitted a few weeks ago he had never heard of Otelul Galati. United did at least beat the Romanians.

 

Football being such a reflex industry, what we have to guard against here is the classic knee-jerk analysis and remember the end-of-an-empire headlines when United turned another simple-looking Champions League group into a similar ordeal in 2005. Since then, United have won four more league titles, a couple of League Cups and been to three Champions League finals, so think carefully before being tempted to dismiss the club's powers of recovery.

 

Yet, equally, it is not something that can be passed off as a fluke, a blip, one of those unexplainable things. This has been coming and the real shame was that Roy Keane, bristling with indignation in his television role, restricted his criticisms to the players. Others could easily have been brought into the equation given the financial restrictions that are in place at Old Trafford and the policy of omertà behind the scenes when it comes to the Glazer family.

 

The truth they do not want you to know at Old Trafford is that in the past five years United's net spend on transfers is a mere £56.9m. Or, to put it another way, less than Aston Villa, with £68.2m, Sunderland's £62.7m and Stoke City's £61.2m. Manchester City have spent £437.1m, Chelsea £144.9m, Liverpool £84m and Tottenham Hotspur £76m.

 

Many will point out the £50m transfer splurge on Phil Jones, Ashley Young and David de Gea as evidence that the Glazers are not as frugal as portrayed. But even this is not as straightforward as it seems. Ferguson has said himself that the new arrivals were funded because of the considerable savings made from releasing Paul Scholes, Gary Neville, Edwin van der Sar and Owen Hargreaves, each of whom earned around £4m a year. United also made around £10m by selling John O'Shea, Wes Brown and Gabriel Obertan, along with a couple of reserve players, Corry Evans and Joe Dudgeon.

 

Ferguson wanted to sign at least one category-A midfielder, but the club decided Wesley Sneijder of Internazionale was out of their reach. Samir Nasri was offered more to go to City, where they already had David Silva and Yaya Touré. Luka Modric wanted to leave Tottenham but United left the bidding to Chelsea and, since then, is it really a surprise Ferguson's team look so conspicuously short in midfield? Anderson is too erratic. Michael Carrick is an elegant frustration. Ryan Giggs is 38. Tom Cleverley introduced some thrust and vibrancy at the start of the season but the expectation placed on him surpasses the reality.

 

 

Then you go through the rest of the team and it becomes apparent there are other issues, too. Rio Ferdinand has been in decline for longer than he will want to remember. Patrice Evra has also lost form. Nemanja Vidic remains the best at what he does in the business but has now snapped his knee ligaments. At least Phil Jones and Chris Smalling have shown they are capable replacements but Jonny Evans is not even close to becoming the player that had been touted. Likewise, nobody should be particularly confident that Federico Macheda, Darron Gibson and Mame Biram Diouf will ever reach the necessary grade. Wayne Rooney, with nine goals in his first five league matches, has not added to that total since 18 September. Michael Owen has not started a league match since October last year. Dimitar Berbatov has somehow managed to win last season's Golden Boot while losing the trust of his manager. As for the Da Silva twins, their injuries don't come in threes but 33s.

 

Ferguson felt it necessary to issue a public apology after the Carling Cup quarter-final defeat against Crystal Palace last week, but what United's supporters would really like is an honest, detailed account about what is really happening behind the scenes, why the club have neglected the midfield issue and what happens next. But it will not happen. Ferguson, never slow to criticise previous regimes about not providing him with greater funds, will not have a bad word said against the Glazers and his press conferences have become such tense, joyless events that nobody should expect him to open up at Carrington on Friday morning.

 

There are rules in place – complex rules whereby difficult questions are not allowed and anybody who pushes the boundaries finds their invite revoked. Tancredi Palmeri, CNN's Italian correspondent, asked Ferguson in his pre-match conference in Basel on Tuesday whether, after leading 2-0, he had made any mistakes in the 3-3 draw against the Swiss side in September. Palmeri was shocked by the reaction, Ferguson staring at him like "ice" while "the press room broke into an 'ooooh'."

 

But Ferguson has clearly made mistakes, swapping his players too regularly, tinkering to the point where the team have lost their rhythm. They have not scored more than once in their past seven league games while, at City, Roberto Mancini's team have accumulated 48 in their first 14 league fixtures. That's more than City managed in total in six of their previous 10 top-flight campaigns. In fact, they overtook the 29 that Stuart Pearce's team scored in 2006-07 in only their ninth game.

 

Ferguson talked last week of Newcastle's success having a direct impact on the bad vibes at Sunderland this season but it is also happening on his own doorstep. From United's perspective, City are turning into a monster, and this is still only the early stage of what they are about to become through Middle Eastern riches. The two teams meet in the third round of the FA Cup on 8 January. City have already won the first derby of the season in what will always be remembered as "the 6-1". If United lose again, there is the potential for some seriously grumpy matches at Old Trafford after the turn of the year.

 

Ferguson, 70 later this month, is talking about staying for another three or four years before finally giving in to retirement. Then, perhaps, we might get another book and the chance to discover whether there are any grievances about the Glazers that he does not want to share while under their employment. Until then, many at Old Trafford could be forgiven for wondering whether two families with no background in football whatsoever, one from Abu Dhabi and one from Florida, are combining to deny him the happy ending he probably deserves

[Unrighteous]

I still hope his heart, as black and devil-touched as anything, gives out.

[Gym Beglin]

The truth they do not want you to know at Old Trafford is that in the past five years United's net spend on transfers is a mere £56.9m. Or, to put it another way, less than Aston Villa, with £68.2m, Sunderland's £62.7m and Stoke City's £61.2m. Manchester City have spent £437.1m, Chelsea £144.9m, Liverpool £84m and Tottenham Hotspur £76m.

 

Many will point out the £50m transfer splurge on Phil Jones, Ashley Young and David de Gea as evidence that the Glazers are not as frugal as portrayed. But even this is not as straightforward as it seems. Ferguson has said himself that the new arrivals were funded because of the considerable savings made from releasing Paul Scholes, Gary Neville, Edwin van der Sar and Owen Hargreaves, each of whom earned around £4m a year. United also made around £10m by selling John O'Shea, Wes Brown and Gabriel Obertan, along with a couple of reserve players, Corry Evans and Joe Dudgeon.

 

 

They're bringing out the NET argument, uh oh, nu you didn...

 

Yes, you could afford to only have the paltry NET spend of £56.9m over the past five years, but outside those five years, and still playing, are £30m Rooney and £30m Ferdinand. Also, let's see an analysis of the wages compared to other clubs. Everyone else HAS to spend more that United's NET spend in an attempt to catch up, because United spent so much money on players to get where they have been for the last 20 years.

 

The £50m spent on De Gea, Jones and Young was 'not as straightforward' as it seems? The 'savings' on wages for Giggs, Scholes, Van Der Sar and Hargreaves...oh, so are the three incoming players not being given a wage then? Not a massive saving, perhaps £10m over the course of the combined contracts, let's be fucking honest here. To say the £50m spend is funded by 'savings' is a load of bollocks. It's so desperate that they've name-dropped the income from *looks it up* 'Corry Evans and Joe Dudgeon'. Evans moved to Hull for £500,000 and Dudgeon moved to Hull for less than that, a fee that isn't even listed, such is it's futility. I'm surprised the author didn't include any savings on tea-bag brand change in the training ground that helped towards the negating of the £50m fee for three players that have proven to be less than useful to propel United towards another title challenge.

 

The only smoking gun here is Ferguson's arrogance. De Gea was always going to be a massive risk, at that age and build he was going to get tested in this division. Ferguson wouldn't wait, he jumped in with £18.9m to make him the second most expensive goalkeeper in history.

£16.5m for Jones looks a decent amount for him, but not sure he's a £16m midfielder, which is what Ferguson wanted.

Young came in for £16m as well, but United just didn't need another winger, it wasn't a priority, Ferguson fucked up, simple.

 

And for the record, the combined fee was £51.9m, as you're counting pennies in your analysis then it's prudent to remember the additional £1.9m, although Evans and Dudgeon may cover the £900,000k for you, just about.

[RobbieOR]

Funny how the glazers were never being mentioned when they were winning.

 

Fickle cunts.