Smalling on the up

Ahead of Friday's England international in Bulgaria all the press intrusion had been on new signing Phil Jones, which was understandable because he has been a revelation. But Smalling has been just as impressive and his improvement, adaptibility and good form won him plaudits in Saturday morning's press.
He still sees himself as a future Manchester United centre half and presumably he hopes an England one too, as do i, but he is doing a fine job and is gaining invaluable experience.

I suppose it turned out to be a bit of a suprise that Cleverley and Jones played no part on Frdiay night as most of the press had thought that Jones and Cleverley had given Capello food for thought. It's obviously just a matter of time for Jones, Cleverley has more of a fight, but i'm sure he will get there in the end.
Rooney is more relaxed and is looking forward to every game, he was England's star performer even without the two goals in Sofia. His understanding with Ashley Young for England before he came to United must have helped the former Villa man to have settled in so easily at Old trafford. He is looking like a man Capello will find it hard to drop from now on and has given United another dimension. When Valencia gets back into first team contension United will have an embarrassment of riches on the flanks. It will be ineteresting to see whether Fergie plays down the middle at any times during the course of the season even if it is just the latter part of matches.

Gary Neville looks back at his England career in his new book with brutal honesty, claiming that they were good but not quite good enough to get to tournament finals or even to win them, even if Fergie had been their manager they wouldn't have won any. But he has more faith in the future as he reckons the new breed of players coming through understand how important ball retension is at the very top level.

The BBC report on the financial results for the year announced by United on Friday. Andersred Disects Q4 and the full year results for Manchester United and sees a well run money making machine needlessly losing half their profit to paying of the Glazer's debt incurred in buying our club.

The Telegraph ran a piece on Lancashire's former England coach Peter Moores ahead of last week's crunch game against bottom side Worcestershire as the county championship nears its climax. Unfortnately Lancashire's brittle batting line up finally cost them big time as they collapsed twice to get beat by ten wickets.
That was a poor poor performance, the top five or six have been letting them down for too long. I can't see how they can possibly end up gaining that historic title whilst the top order keeps on collapsing game after game.
I heard Moores being interviewed after the game and he said the players knew they hadn't performed and would learn from it. But it's been happening game after game, but this time the bowlers weren't able to rescue them. That's twice the bottom team has beaten them when the crunch has been on, it's hard to be confident for the final games. The weather forecast for this week doesn't look great either.

As time seemingly runs out for Gaddafi, the close relationship Blair's government had with the dictators regime see the light of day as Tripoli is free of Gadaffi but not yet totally under the control of rebel forces. It truly stinks how little value new labour put on human rights, liberal values or any kind of acceptable morality.
Adrian Hamilton looks at the grubby reality of the wests supposedly enlightened intervention in Libya and argues it is never simply humanitarian. The liberal riposte to Charles Moore's Telegraph column, the weekend revelation's must put the grubby deals under danger.
Andy Becket wonders why as our Military capablity shrinks British governments are still alarmingly prone to launching quick wars.

After the serialisation of Alistair Darling's memoirs, John Kampfner thinks Ed Miliband needs to d more than just "move on". Jackie Ashley argues that the memoirs shows that we have to change our culture of lionising strong leaders and stand up to the bullies.

Paul Krugman argues that Martin Wolf "gets it", after the FT columnist ferociously laid into President Obama's political strategy. Paul Harris argues that Democrats complacently looking at the nonentities that the Republicans may end up with as their Presidential candidate may be in for a nasty shock if Obama doesn't get his act together it will be his to lose.
Twelve big banks are to be sued by a Federal government agency over their misrepresentation of the quality of mortage securities the assembled and sold ahead of 2008's credit crunch.

Jonathan Portes, former economics advisor to David Cameron argues that there is a common sense alternative to the governments economic strategy.
Tory Frasier Nelson warns about the dangers of home ownership, yet these people still lionise Thatcher and her time as premier, as one after the other of her flagship policies turn out to have been unmitigated disasters for this country and its economy.
Steve Richards looks at why too much money is as bad for bankers as it is for footballers, the two last bastions of the free market lightly regulated policies that have landed the country in the mess that it is in.

One of my all time favourite songs