Sneijder to stay

All the papers are reporting that United have unofficially informed the press that United have dropped any interest in signing the Dutch Inter Milan midfielder. I can't say i'm going to cry about it, as much as i have said in the past that we need strengthning in the middle of the park, to me he isn't a central midfield player he plays farther up the pitch.
He is a good player alright, not good enough to justify that transfer fee or those wages though. United's strategy as regards the press during this transfer saga has been odd, so i can well understand why nobody is quite sure whether United really mean it.

Ian Herbert profiles Tom Cleverley as the man to step into Scholes shoes, i hope we can get away from that. He could well be the man who has persuaded Fergie that Sneijder was a luxury we can do without.
He isn't a Scholes replacement, i have always seen him as a cross between Nicky Butt and David Beckham. He is going to be a very good player, i have to admit i'm not quite sure how good. One thing he has got going for him, because it's what we have needed for a while is he has an eye for a goal. We haven't really had a meaningful goals contribution from midfield since Scholes dropped deeper later in his career.
The player who divides opinion at Old trafford like no other, Michael Carrick gets the thumbs up in this appreciation. I know he is highly appreciated amongst his peers, because he has been given a job to do and he does it as well as anybody. The problem is those first couple of seasons where he was given more of a license to play means the public expect to see the Carrick that was such a revelation alongside Paul Scholes.
Whether you are a fan or not it can't be denied he has had a roughish couple of years since then. The return to form at the end of season was as timely for his United career as it was for United itself.

James Lawton salutes Wayne Rooney's aspiration to reach the levels set by Messi during Barca's destruction of us at Wembley. He has looked the part all through pre-season, right from the first game his fitness levels looked good and his touch has been excellent. Though he came good during the latter satges of last season he does owe us something this season. Mind you looking at depth of talent amongst the forwards at the club for the coming season, he will need to play to his best.

Graham Taylor fancies United to top the league table come May, he thinks Fergie still has a glint of steel. I have to admit to being more excited by the coming season than since we put five past Fulham on the first day of the 2006-07 season and realised that maybe that team was going somewhere after three pretty mediocre seasons. The signings and the youngsters either maturing as first teamers or ready to break through over the next couple of years mean we will hopefully see the most exciting football since that 2006-07 season. I don't expect it to be dull anyway.

Another reason is players whose time was either up or were never going to make it at United have finally started to leave the club. With Obertan off to Newcastle, it just remains for Gibson to find himself a new club.
Though there was something very rotten about his transfer and the fact he obviously was nowhere near United standard it was a shame to hear Bebe has done a cruciate and will miss six months of football.

Owen Hargreaves is finally going to West Brom, it will be really interesting to see ho this goes.

James Lawson describes the pressure on Mancini, if he doesn't keep the money men onside, he will be a dead man walking. You have to wonder what he has been told is the minimum to be expected this season. I don't rate him, so i should want him to stay, i suppose, but a manager every couple of seasons would also ensure the money doesn't talk.

And now to the riots. What can you say, i sat speechless as everybody else i suppose as the rioters turned into wanton looting and it became obvious that the looters, gangs and opportunists realised that they had the police on the run and our capital became almost lawless, an anarchists dream.
It was bound to spread around the countryand i'm afraid if it was going to happen in Manchester, which it definitely would it was almost certainly going to be Salford that got it. And get it it did, i expected that but i had hoped town would escape the worse which made Tuesday night all the more disappointing.
This underclass has been intentionally created by the economic model that we have followed for the last thirty years, so i suppose the country is getting what it deserves. I have no time for the rioters, most of them are the type of people you would cross the road to avoid. But they have no time for anybody except themselves or maybe at best fellow gang members. As far as they are concerned normal rules don't apply. Remember Thatcher deliberately made 3 to 4 million people on the dole in the early eighties and for a lot of these people they never really entered the real world of having a job and responsibility.
The lack of good parenting has been brought up but the parents of most of these kids were probably brought under this lost generation where there were no jobs and no hope. Add in other factors such as our wrong headed drug legislation which makes the local druglords the man to look up to as one of the only ways to make money and it's no wonder they hate the police. The rioters would almost certainly have ended up inside at sometime anyway so i suppose to them it was a case of why not go out with a bang. If people have nothing to give a shit about, unsuprisingly they really won't give a shit.
It was Norman Lamont who said unemployment was a price worth paying. Well this is the price the country is now paying, i'm hoping people realise that it really isn't. The real answer this is to return to an economic model thats ultimate aim is full employment.
This generation is probably lost, but if we change course the next generation can be given hope. I fail to believe a country with full employment would have seen this kind of riot. When i left school and went into work all those years ago if my senior workmates would have found out i had been involved in that kind of thing i would have been sent to Coventry.

Craig Murray believes that the riots are part of the malaise of modern capitalism. Peter Oborne continues the state of Britain theme noting that moral decay permeates from the very top of society noting that very richest part of our society is as detatched form contemporary Britain as the looters.
Martin Bright was a former home affairs reporter and he argues that this a crisis that has been brewing for years. Whilst current BBC home affairs writes of the return of the underclass and why no country can afford to ignore any strata of its society. David Goodhart describes the weeks events as the look at me riots. Of course that was part of it, these people have no values whatsoever but we won't solve that other than to try and replace those values and full employment would be a part of those values. Of course this would mean more than just part time retail jobs as the country and economy can't continue buying things that we no longer make.
Simon Nixon writes of the double whammy that globalization has played in providing the circumstances for the weeks riots. As any Keynesian would argue and rightly in my opinion the golden age of the world economy was 1945 -75. For the vast majority if western citizens this was the best time to have been born in the history of the world. We seem surely but steadily to be harking back to the world of the thirties despite all the lessons of history. And for what, to keep the very richest, individuals, financial institutions and corporations even richer, fucking scandalous.
Deborah Orr writes that society must fundamentally change to give every one a stake in society if we are to move on as a country. Penny red argues that no one expected this as she describes living in London during the trouble.

Bagehot wrote this before yesterdays commons debate on the riots, he argued that the riots could help Cameron and the tories as that is what riots usually do . But after Cameron and the tories blaming police tactics this morning has seen the police fight back and with the police cuts still being defended by the coalition i'm not sure he will prove to be right. After the hacking scandal there isn't much lost between the Met and the government, this just seems to be making it worse. Once again Cameron seemed to have responded well to events, but has he?
Simon Jenkins goes back to the stifling centralization of this country and argues that our cities need real power deploring the lack of civic power in our cities. I'm still not a fan of elected mayors but i'm totally with him on the the centralization of the state. Who was it that started that trend again, oh that's right Thatcher. In thirty years time she will be seen to have been wrong on almost everything apart from her stance on the cold war.