Smalling challenging Ferdinand

Ferguson will ring the changes tonight probably starting with Owen and Macheda up front. It goes without saying that i would far rather have Hernandez starting with the Italian. Bebe will be on the bench but will probably be given a run out.
The days when Ferdinand is an automatic pick are probably at an end according to Fergie, who has already told us that he chose Vidic as captain because he wanted someone that would play the majority of games. Fergie is supposedly happy with what he has seen on the training pitch as he eyes up Smalling to be Ferdinand's long term successor.

David Conn gives the inside on the strangest transfer of the summer. My question would be why do United feel it is that important to keep in with Mendes. The Guardian also report on a change in United's contract renogotiation strategy whereby some players will now only have their contracts renewed with one year of their contract remaining in a bid to save money. That sounds absolutely desperate and is something i can see coming back to bite us in a big way somewhere down the line.
If the red knights ever do take control of the club, Gill has surely got to go. I don't know how much involvment he has had in the formulation of that piece of nonesense, possibly not much, but the fact that he will try and defend it, just makes him a laughing stock. How long before City nip in and offer somebody a lengthy contract too good to turn down.

Sky sports report that Kuszczak is pondering whether he will have to move on from United to get more first team football. The realistic answer would be yes he will have to move on.

Berbatov puts down his "awesome form " down to the extra fitness work that put in during the summer.
Vidic belives that if Berbatov keeps on scoring he can help United to recapture the title.

Simon Hattenstone salutes Ronnie O'Sullivan who may be potty but tells it like it is. I watched that 147 and that was how i want to see my sporting heroes, totally unconventional. The mere fact of asking the referee if there was a prize after potting just one red would have been inviting pressure that every other player could hace done without. But it was just what the mercurial O'Sullivan wanted to give him a bit of incentive fo the match after the last frame had seen him smashing balls out of frustration.
I love the way he will not conform to suit the sport or the sponsors, he is no robot. When Rooney's dalliances came to light, most papers speculated about the dangers to his bank balance as his sponsors may end up deserting him. Does he not already get ever so slightly more than enough from United not to worry about such things. Everybody knows that he has " issues " but they make him the only snooker player that i would actually ever want to go to see live.
I would love to see the day when we get sportsmen who eschew the sponsorships and refuse to go along with the idea that they have to be a role model for the country. Other sports might start to give us some characters like O'Sullivan again

Steve Richards thinks Clegg has held the coalition line for the moment with his activists, but next years conference will be the one to watch. An opinion that the Telegraph's Benedict Brogan agrees with.
Mary Riddell wonders if Nick Clegg knows what his party still stands for and tells him to prove that he has not sold his parties soul for power.
Simon Hoggart delivers the ultimate insult, well for a liberal anyway, comparing Clegg's performance to Blair. Well that is who i would compare him with, a right winger who could have been almost equally at home in the tory party and has staged a orange book coup of almost new labour proportions. He will have the lib dems championing the third way next.
Polly Toynbee accuses Clegg of talking pure Cameronomics and of using the Thatcherite " there is no alternative.


The FT is the latest opponent of Rupert Murdoch's plan to take full control of BSkyB. Well Cable is going to threaten to give more power to shareholders to try to hem in bankers bonuses, though that doesn't sound very radical to me. If he does on thing in government to be remembered for this is it.
George Eaton accuses Cable's critics on the right of a lack of understanding of capitalism, they are too intellectualy barren to understand the different models of capitalism. Michael White has a bit of a laugh at it. Meanwhile Robert Peston tries to look behind what Cable's motives for the speech were. It's not enough to point out 2010's capitalism faults Cable has to use his office to do something about it  writes Deborah Hargreaves.

Stephen King argues that the west has not learnt the lessons of Japan in it's economic policy response to the credit crunch and the recession. We will be doomed to a 2/10 economy if we don't take deflation seriously, isn't Sentence on the monetary policy committee is still woriied about inflation.
A former economic advisor to UK warns that the action proposed at the lib dem conference to tackle tax avoidance is a drop in the ocean compared to the actual size of the problem.
Of course the Irish have followed the an free market orthodox economic prescription for its current woes, it doesn't seem to be doing them much good. Is Osborne watching i wonder!
Stephen Foley doesn't like Wall street's habit of window dressing, it's not illegal but it's just wrong.  All creative accounting is wrong to me.
Wall street the sequel amongst a number of films and documentaries about to hit the streets to remind us who really put our economies in the doldrums.

Alex Sater believes the tea party is here to stay and will probably bring about the destruction of the Republican party as we have known it. He thinks three party politics is on the way and that the country will increasingly gravitate towards the centre. There are a lot of presumptions there, it takes no account of a possible worsening of America's economic position as decades of living of Asian debt will have to come to an end some day. Who can forecast the future when that happens.
Paul Mason does not see like that after seeing him give a speech in Indiana, he thinks he is just one more christian evengelist trying to influence the christian right and i presume the Republican party. Matthew Norman pokes fun at Christine O'Donell's past but ends by warning however laughable they seem they are still extremists who need to be defeated.
Wendy Kaminer uses this article in Spiked to show what a wildly dipsarate grouping the tea party actually are and wonders who is really behind them.