United protect future

United protect the future of the squad giving new more lucrative and longer contracts to Hernandez and Cleverley. That means United are really safeguarding the medium to long term future of the club, securing almost everybody bar Berbatov to the club for the next three years at least.
Reports circulated alleging Real Madrid were sniffing around Hernandez, who knows, how true those were but the guy is a born goalscorer. He still needs work on his all round game, but if Fergie is going back to a four striker rotation policy he fits into that very well. To my mind he would be a Solskjaer type squad member who has the potential to be even better than the baby faced assasin.
I'm glad Cleverley has also been sorted out, though i'm sure there were never ever any worries that he was looking elsewhere having come through the clubs ranks. Amazingly after just a handful of games he has shown himself to be our best and most important central midfield player. I have rated him ever since i saw him have a stormer for Watford in the championship a couple of seasons ago. I was a bit concerned the way that Wigan used him last season, but it seems to have been a great learning curve to his career.
He brings an energy to our midfield that we have lacked and that we will need if, or more hopefully when we come up against that great Barca team. Obviously he also brings great technique and a very clever football brain. The next step for him is to start to scoring the goals we know he is capable of. Given a decent run of games, i am sure they will come.

The press are speculating that Cleverley will be back for Saturday's biggie at Loonypool alongside the captain Vidic who hasn't been seen since the opening game of the season. The inclusion of both players would obviously be a huge bonus. I can't say i would be as confident as i would like to be if Fergie was forced to pick Anderson and Carrick. I saw Fletcher put in the best shift i have seen from him for a while for the jocks on Tuesday against Spain and if has come through that unscathed my midfield pairing if we go 4-4-2 would be Cleverley and Fletcher. If it's a 4-3-3 i would still have them as part of the 4-4-2.
Needless to say the return would be a big boost as well, even if Anfield has been a bit of a bogey ground for him in recent years. The form of our defence over the past few games has given cause for concern and he would help instil more confidence in it. Ther has been no mention of Smalling recently, i don't know why, out poor defensive form has also coincided with his loss to injury. The return of the big centre half would be almost as good news for me.
The presumed retirement of Vidic from international football for Serbia seems a bit premature, was it a reaction to the missed penalty. Is he looking at Ferdinand and looking to prolong his United career, i suppose some conspiracy theorists will think he is looking for a move for one last big pay day. We are going to need him at United for the next couple of season to help bring Smalling and Jones through, so i hope there is nothing to that.

United blogger Written offside looks at Danny Welbeck and hopes to see the local youngster partner Rooney up front if Fergie sticks with the 4-4-2 formation. I would totally concur with that we need energy, workrate and commitment before our superior skill comes to the fore, hopefully. And Welbeck provides that better than any of the available strikers to be paired with Rooney. Of course he isn't a bad player too.
I haven't been as suprised as the blogger has been with Welbeck's impact since his return from his loan season at Sunderland. I have watched him since he was 16 in the youth team and he has always looked the part. I have to admit though, even i did wonder if i had got it wrong after his dismal display during the FA cup defeat at home to Leeds a couple of seasons ago. He was hardly on his own that day though, and as he has said you need to be playing regularly to hope to make an impact in the first team when the chance arises and he wasn't playing regularly.
Along with Cleverley he is an example to all our youngsters that going out on loan is looking like it's the way to go if you want to make it nowadays as youngster coming through the ranks at Old trafford. Which stil makes me wonder why Macheda is still at Old trafford and not out on loan. He should be banging on Fergie's door asking to go out on loan, even to a championship club, he needs to be playing regular competitive football.

Ther was a lot of claptrap written about Rooney's sending off last week. Hansen warned Rooney he was risking it all if he doesn't learn to control his temper. I'm not going to sit here and condone what he did, but if we have learnt anything with Rooney it's that we are going to have to live with these moments and that's United as well as England. All we can hope for is that he doesn't do it when it really matters.
As for Capello warning Rooney he will have to fight to get his place back, well yeh of course he will, your only world class player. This is an opportunity for the Italian though, England are far too reliant on the number ten and he should be using this opportunity to experiment up front. I have nod doubt that Welbeck will be a big part of those experiments.

Liverpool's new owners break ranks to argue that Barca and Real Madrid are showing us the way forward. Despite United's statement that they supported the collective TV premier league deal they had been in contact with their fellow yanks about how to chart a way forward. Well there's a suprise.
Any fool can see why this would be bad for the premier league, where is Scudamore and his laissez faire attitude to foreign owners now. David Conn explains why this is just yet another plan for the rich to get richer or more to the point for rich foreign owners to make money from their purchses of EPL franchises (sic).
David Whelan has been angrily having a go in the papers this morning claiming what they really want is a European super league. That just holds so little appeal to tha average soccer fan it's a laughable idea, it would be the ultimate TV sport played in front of the prawn sandwich brigade. It would possibly kill football of in this country.
All this when the British government is at last threatning to get involved in the running of the British game, is it a case of too little, too late or are they just in time?

Of course some people couldn't care less about the wellbeing of the game as long as their cut keeps them in the lifestyle they have been accustomed to, of the back of the little players who actually pay their money, naturally.
Peter Harrison has fallen foul of his fellow greed merchants and is now threatening to name names. This was reported a few weeks back, still no sign of any broadcast though.

The most serious event yet in this tumultuos year in the middle east and the Arab world. It seems after the Wikileaks brought the emnity between Saudi Arabi and Iran out into the open things can only get worse after the US revealed a plan to assasinate the Saudi Ambassador who urged the US to "cut of the head of the snake".
Shashank Joshi warns that things will indeed only get worse in the Telegraph as both countries regimes feel under pressure as the Arab spring changes facts on the ground. And old alliances go to the wall.

Craig Murray reveals on his blog the real story behind the Fox/Verrity scandal that they don't want us to know. If true this would be dynamite, whatever the truth i don't see how Fox can survive, because it all stinks enough as it is and the changing defence just seems pathetic.

Steve Richards argues for a supposedly non ideological government it's ideology that is the biggest danger to its longevity and success. If the Health secretary won't be accountable, the who will?

Alistair Campbell takes aim at the herd mentality amongst the political press to argue that Labour are a lot more relevant than news-comment fused media think, and makes a persuasive case.

Bagehot explains why the tories are backing Euro zone integration and the answer is that they are as passionately anti Europe as ever but in an emergency, warily any lifeline will do.
Mick Hume describes why he thinks the bankruptcy of democracy in Europe is too high a price to pay for saving the Euro-elite. I can't really argue with most of that except to argue how long have some of these countries actually been democratic and i don't mean just eastern Europe. And who has helped them ovecome their past to embrace democracy, but his hated European union.
That is the tragedy of what is unfolding, Timothy Garton Ash puts the Europhile case whilst acknowledging the massive flaws that need to be addressed if the Germans see the light and save the whole project.
As for the financial plans he objects to, so do i, but they are not the sole preserve of Europe, bailing out the banks and the finaciers is the global elites answer to the crisis and it's why we are slowly sinking into another great depression.

Stephen King looks at the divergient views on the economy from Osborne and Balls and observes they can't both be right. But whilst not coming down on either side, though i assume he leans more to Osborne he does acknowledge that the so called economic rebalancing that Osborne stressed he was looking to achieve was pie in the sky.
Well that wouldn't have anything to do with austerity, cuts and a global lack of growth now, would it? I know it's a lot more complicted than that but it surely hasn't helped.
George Monibot contines with the economic doom theme arguing that if professor Steve Keen is right we are doomed to another great depression. I certainly wouldn't put my money on Bernanke, King et al getting us out of this mess, they have been as much part of the problem as part of the solution since this crisis began in 2008.
Larry Elliott is as down on the prospects of an economic recovery as the previous two commentators as he argues that Britain's rising cycle of debt and dependence on consumption to drive growth make it unlikely the economy wil bounce back any time soon. David Blanchflower argues the scale of the financial shock is getting clearer and that Osborne's mettle will be tested when Greece defaults as it surely will. Given Osborne's record in 2008 ans since where he has got every big call completely wrong, that is a scary thought.
Robert Skidelsy carries on explaining that the boom was the illusion and thinks that the best we can hope for is for a managed retreat from the wilder sgores of globalisation. The alternative being the collapse of the Euro, protectionism and war.
On a less serious note how does that fit in with the US vision of the future of British football.
And finally Martin Wolf of the FT is terrified of the prime ministers pre-Keynesian views, as are we all.



Dan Hartnett a man who encapsulates where the British establishment is rotten to the core, Private Eye has been on his trail for a while. Have they finally got their man, even a Tory MP has called for him to go after Goldmans appear to have been given preferential treatment over a bankers bonus tax avoidance scheme.
Richard Murphy blogs that a new report shows that the 98 of the FTSE 100 hundred biggest companies use tax havens. It truly stinks.
Paul Krugman thinks something maybe afoot as the Occupy Wall street grows and even spreads its wings. Well we have to live in hope, i'm just not getting my hopes up too much.

Brett Anderson picks his baker's dozen which is fairly predictable, but i can't deny that i also love almost all of his list.
Andrew Pulver asks quietly is a golden age of British cinema, well as he cites it's certainly an improvement on the sad state of affairs that led to sex lives of the potato men.

I saw this recently on one of the BBC programmes celebrating the old grey whistle test, it's a brilliant cover of a great song, Johnny Winter.