Life without Valencia

Richard Williams speculates on how Fergie will try to cope with the big loss of Antonio Valencia for the season. The latest news this morning is it is not quite as bad as feared but i would still be amazed to see him play a meaningful role in this season. So unless Obertan has really come on we will struggle to cope, as i said yesterday as things stand, for the biggest games i would ask Rooney to play on the left with Berbatov in the middle of 4-3-3 formation. It may be the more mundane fixtures where Fergie would have wanted to play two strikers where we will struglle. I was going to say all of a sudden we seem to be overloaded with strikers but not enough wide men. But we have all wondered how many strikers he actually needed, especially when somebody like Macheda hardly seems to get on the bench never mind the starting eleven.
Which brings us to Michael Owen, his signing looks more and more bizarre. To my mind he was never a United player, his first touch was never good enough and even when he was scoring goals regularly for Liverpool he brought nothing else to the table. So when his game seemed to go at Newcastle as his lost his biggest asset, his pace, the last thing we ever thought we would see would be Owen in the red of Manchester United. He is a gamble that hasn't paid off and Fergie should be looking to blood Macheda more often instead of sending him on as a sub as he did the other night to no obvious tactical purpose.
That was another disappointing aspect of Tuesday night, the use of substitutions. Bringing Owen on and sending Hernandez to the right seemed nonsenical to me, i'll bet Hernandez has hardly ever played out wide. I'm not sure how good Macheda will actually become, Welbeck is the brighter prospect for me, but the other night i would have been bringing him on before Owen. As he showed against Chelsea last season when we put in another listless performance he does at least possess the ability to upset the oppostion and galvanise his teamates when he comes on as a sub. Whereas Owen just ran around and hardly got a touch of the ball, not exactly an impact substitution was it. But there again, when has he been. Besides not being good enough for the first team on a regular basis, the City 4-3 aside i can't remember him changing too many games after coming on for us.
Which makes the news that he is frustrated with his role at United comical, he is one lucky bastard to even be at United. I'm not sure he would be good enough to be a regular starter at any other premier league and i mean any other. At any team in the bottom half of the table he would be expected to put in more of a shift than he ever has at United and from the digust with which geordie fans talk of him than he ever did at St. James park. And he is certainly not good enough to be a regular starter at any club in the top half of the premier league.



Mervyn King admits that bankers and policymakers were to blame for the crisis at his appearance at the TUC conference but he still feels that severe cuts are necessary. It would be nice if journalists and opposition MP's even reminded him of that a bit more often,as lib dem backbencher Bob Russell said in the commons last week 'Yes, let's deal with the welfare cheats. But the notion that they are responsible for all the ills of the nation is in fact a smokescreen and it's not very ethical'. King also seemed to agree with the assertion that massive tax evasion should be more of a priority.
David Blanchflower uses his new statesman column to applaud the appointment of Robert Chote to head the Office for budget responsibility, but thinks it may well come back to haunt Osborne and the coalition.
Meanwhile Keynes biographer Robert Skidelsky and Michael Kennedy point out that the cuts will affect future generations as well as the present one.
Owen Hatherley suggests a Keynesian type plan to improve public transport in the UK.
Nick Clegg continues on his journey to the tory party as he defends radical benefits cuts  whilst the new statesman look at the simmering tensions within the lib dem party before the party conference. Hopi Sen's blog discusses the Boles suggestion of an electoral pact between the tories and the lib dems. Whoever predicts the outcome of this coalition administration, whether it splits, goes the distance or the lib dems splits will be one hell of a top pundit. I have no idea how this will pan out, it makes for fascinating politics, it's a pity it's the party i have always voted for that looks like it's going to come out worst of all. Of course that is if you are left wing liberal.

Robert Peston thinks that the Murdoch's planned takeover of 100% of BSyB will be sent to Ofcom as Cable will ask whether the deal will affect plurality rules. The Guardian report that he will take a hands off approach instead. I would like to think that Peston is right but suspect the latter will prove correct.

Music
Nat Birchall - Akhenaten: More jazz from the booming Manchester scene. As he takes his inspiration mainly from John Coltrane i was probably always going to like this. And like it i do, it's nicley chilled out.
Pissed jeans - Kings of jeans: I'm still undecided on this, i suppose i can't get over the fact i'm not mad at the screaming style of the vocalist. But some of music reminds me of the less commercial early grunge sound of Nirvana and it lopes off onto a real kind of dirty Sabbath sound at times that i love.
Swamp Dogg - Total destruction to your mind: A classic piece of soul funk rock from 1970, nothing groundbreaking just great unes and great playing.
The Album Leaf - A chorus of storytellers: A good album that kind of strays onto the same territory as Four tet which can obviously be no bad thing. Not quite in the same league as Kieran Hebden but nice to be going along with.
Vetiver - Tight knit: Another decent album, another US folk rock act delivering the goods at the moment. I wouldn't call it more commercial than their peers but it's not quite as progressive as Fleet foxes or Bon Iver, still some cracking tunes on it.
Wilco - Wilco: One of the reviews of this that i have read said he didn' think it was as ambitious as it's predecessors. It may not be " out there " but it's not exactly easy listening. I think it's the best thing they have done since Yankee hotel foxtrot and i love that album, it was probably one of my favourite from the last decade.
Yeasayer -  Odd blood: It took a few listens for me to get into this, but i got there in the end. I suppose it's kind of post rock like the album leaf but with a poppier techno edge, it's good.