Are United in the market

Bayern claim Schwinsteiger will be made to see out the remainder of his contract before he is allowed to leave the club and hope to have sign a new contract with the club. The strong rumour is that he wants to come here and after our season so far he is a player who would definitely enhance our squad. But talk like that has echoes of the drawn Hargreaves saga and how much of a ride did they end up taking us for there, when you look at his subsequent career. Will United stump up a sizeable transfer fee for somebody so near the end of his contract under the Glazer's and the debt. 

Fergie accepts that we are entering a crucial period of the season with Arsenal next week and Chelsea the week after. And don't forget tomorrow, our defence has improved in recent weeks, and it will probably have to be on song tomorrow as, weather permitting, Blacpool will surely have a go at us. I actually wish we were playing the rent boys first because i think they are vulnerable. It's certainly about time we came away from stamford bridge with a result. To think what a great ground it used to be for us. Nowadays a point seems to be the best that we come away from west London with.

Fergie will become the longest serving manager in the history of the club on the day of the Chelsea fixture eclipsing the tenure of the legend that is Sir Matt Busby. To have one manager who led the club for more than twenty years is phenomenal but to have had two is truly miraculous. As Ferguson rightly says it probably won't happen again, more's the pity.

Viv Anderson thinks too much is being expected of this current crop of youngsters. He thinks it was asking a lot of the players changing all of the back five, as West Ham were never going to approach the game in the manner that Rangers did the week before. Of course they didn't have the players in front of them to keep the ball as well as they did in Glasgow either. Time wil tell if he is right, Fabio has a chance, if he can learn to defend and Obertan is worth persevering with. Of course our most promising youngsters are on loan, Cleverley and Welbeck everybody knows about and there is Drinkwater, James and King who i really like the look of.
Steve Bruce accepts that if Welbeck contines his excellent form for Sunderland he will price himself out of the reach of Sunderland football club. He's talking a good game as he must know that Welbeck is going nowhere, at the end of this season other than back to Manchester United.

The fallout begins as Anson says England should not bid for the world cup again until FIFA is reformed. Sam Wallace explains how Warner gave Cameron and co a humiliating lessons in the politics of FIFA. Oh the anger, what kills me is this new found indignation at the corruptness of the organisation, as if all this is news. It was never worth kissing the arse of these guys to win the right to hold the competition in the first place, they totally and utterly deserve the humiliation they have been visited. The BBC and panorama can come out of this with their heads held high. They did the right thing.
Andrew Osborn looks at yesterday's events from Russia and sees a personal triumph for Putin, but does admit that Russia is a football market largely untapped. I accept that, i don't have a problem with Russia, the country winning, it's the regime and all it stands for that i can't stand. The fact that FIFA awarded the two tournaments to two such unwholesome regimes tells you everything you need to know about FIFA.

David Conn looked at the pros and the cons of England's bid for the right to host the 2018 world cup. I'm afraid it's a no brainer for me, i wouldn't want my hands to be soiled having to deal with that rotten organisation. As we saw with the last competition in South Africa it's a vastly over rated competition, Fergie was spot on the money when he claimed the champions league was the top trophy in world football.
David Goldblatt argues that whatever the result of the bid, FIFA must be reformed.

England have another good day on the first day of the Adelaide second test and it's the bowler who i was most worried about before the series who did the damage again. I have been staying up to watch the first session of this series and Anderson has been head and shoulders above the bowlers on either side so far, and i'm including Siddle in that. That first half an hour was absolutley amazing cricket, Australia are in a bad place at the moment.
If England have a good day today they will have a more than decent chance of getting that vital first teat victory on the board. If England go one up in this series, i can't see the Aussies coming back, and the ashes will be on their way back to these shoes for the first time since Gattings 86-87 series.

Steve Richards takes David Laws to task agreeing with Andrew Adonis in his news statesman review of Laws new book chronicling the aftermath of the last election and the run up to the agreement of the Con-Dem coalition that Laws and Clegg never wanted to do a deal with Labour.
Mike Smithson of political betting thinks Richards has got it all wrong, whether the lib dems wnated to do a deal with labour or not, the arithmatic didn't stack up and a deal with labour was never on the cards. Smithson is right that there was never a realistic prospect of lib lab coalition, something which Adonis barely mentions in his review but i think Adonis is spot on in thinking that Clegg and Laws never wanted to a deal with the labour party.
As far as i can see whilst Clegg, Laws and fellow orange bookers dominate the lib dem hierarchy the chances of a progressive lib lab alliance are non existant. I think that Clegg is probably a closet tory, but Laws definitely is, they have tried to get him to defect before now, that says it all. Take away his pro Europeanism and maybe his sexuality and how deep does his liberalism run. How many real liberals could for one minute countenance being a part of that reactionary rabble. Laws responds to Adonis.
Peter Oborne salutes Clegg as a man of courage, easy for a conservative to say. He makes a fair point about his enemies of the actualite of the compromise needed for coalition governments, which they are supposed to believe in, and the reality of it, which so far they don't much care for. What that leaves out is the politics. The lib dems did not have to join this tory coalition, there policies were far enough apart, especially the economic policy, for which i can't be the onlyone to wonder whether Clegg, Laws and co ever actually belived in, now we know they didn't belive in their student fees policy.
Supposedly one of the arguments that persuaded some to join the coalition insteading of pursuing a policy of supply and confidence plus was a fear of being wiped out at the next election as they would have been skint.  If the result is electoral oblivion which seems to have scared the shit out of them all of a sudden after the student fee debacle.
To me and other liberal minded people the former course was surely preferable to going along with a pre Keynesian economic policy that was what we definitely did not vote for and would not vote for again.
Iain Martin wonders just how much the notting hill set of Cameron and Osborne really understand the squeezed middle that Ed Miliband described last week in his media offensive. He is onto to something there, he gives off the heir of someone who thinks he is destined to rule but without understanding who he needs to keep happy to be successful. Will being socially liberal be enough in these dire economic times. I wouldn't want Osborne to be the man holding my hand whilst steering the economy in these unprecedented times.

Ferdinando Giugliano and John Lloyd argue that whilst the old lech Berlusconi's reign may be coming to an end but his legacy of a media state will endure and will and has influenced politicians in Europe and elsewhere. It will be interesting to see whether the Eurozone crisis will affect the corrupt nature of the Italian state. I'm afraid i wouldn't bet on it.

Alex Hochuli reviews US journalist Larry Rohter's latest book Brazil on the rise. It sounds like an interesting read, if i was betting man or an investor in countries futures, i would be plumping on Brazil to be a serious world player during the coming century over say Russia.

A Liberal lawyer and writer takes a look at the latest wikileaks saga and warns that the organisation has no democratic mandate and that transparency is no the only liberal value. In other words it is serving a useful function but its lack of accoutability is troublesome.
Jon Snow explains why the wikileak revelation that the Saudis called for the US to bomb the Iranians could be just the tip of the iceberg. Berlusconi and Putin the gruesome twosome from hell, there must be something Putin puts in western politicians coffee when their political shelf life looks to be over, first Schroeder now Italy's greatest joke. Annalisa Piras isn't surprised or impressed but wonders just how much Italians will really care

US energy secretary warns that his country faces a sputnik moment as it could face being left behind in the race for energy innovation and the financial rewards that could accrue to the countries in the forefront of renewable energy research.
Of course exactly the same could and should be said for this country as the current coalition looks set to be as big a disappointment as new labour were on this front.
Fred Pearce look at the current state of global warming science and whilst arguing the more we know the less we can predict. The one thing for certain is there is warming occuring, but why and what will happen in the future is what scientists are not really sure of. However he applauds the willingness of climate change researchers to be more open and willing to put themselves up to scrutiny.

The Republican party shows it's true face as it refuses to let Bush's tax cuts for the rich expire as Bush had legislated for them to do.

Mad men has finished and finished for good on the BBC, a crying shame for the best TV programme of the moment. Good review here from the Telegraph's Patrick Smith, it was a typical " didn't see that coming " finale. I will be interested to see how they portray Don Draper's new wife in the next series. Has she played him or as he shirked away from responsibility as Smith believes.