United's reserves won the play off against Villa at Old trafford last night, winning on penalties after the 90 iminutes ended 0-0. As no score draws goes, it wasn't a bad game, the first half was pretty dreary as neither side really tested the the opposition goal but the second half saw both teams going for it, with United possibly just the better team.
As ever with the reserves, it seems to be more about giving players a game rather than about picking the best balanced team and the first half saw United struggle to mount any serious pressure on Villa's goal. An example would be the ninety minutes from Larnell Cole, who when stuck out on the right in the first half couldn't get into the game at all or should i say he couldn't affect the game. He doesn't have the pace to play out wide and the lack of an attacking right back didn't help his cause. Once he was switched into the middle at the beginning the second half there was a drastic improvement in his game and United's ability to effectively use the possession and eventually to dominate for periods. If you watched that first half you would have said he would struggle to have a career in professional football, but if you had watched the second, you'd have come away enthused by his technique and ability to use the ball against bigger opponents. Despite missing a great chance, Will Keane once more caught the eye with an eye catching performance.
Others to catch the eye were Michael Keane with his tremedous runs out od defence and for the most part his good use of the ball. He has tremendous pace and seems to be able to recover postions as Ferdinand did before his legs and back went. Whether he will be strong enough to make it at centre half at first team level is the question. One thought occured to me last night, with those long raking runs he makes, it might well be worth trying him at right back at some stage, he could make a great over lapping right back. Petrucci was decent in the first half but he seemed to fizzle out during the second half.
My man of the match would have to have been Jesse Lingard, who was excellent and got stronger as the game went on. I'm not sure i have ever seen him have a bad game. I won't say it's a shame he isn't bigger, it's more a case that i wish he was more powerful. He doesn't seem to really have a best position, he started out wide last night as he usually does but his best work is nearly always done during the latter stages of a game where he roams across the pitch and just behind the forward.
Needless to say Johnstone had a great shoot out but he was just as impressive during the ninety minutes as well as making a couple of great saves. Tunnicliffe gave us a few of his trademark forward runs in the first half but was a disappointment again for me, his first touch and use of the ball weren't good enough. He gets caught on the ball too much for someone who has a chance to make it at the top level. It maybe he has hit a dip in form, but he doesn't look like he is going to fulfil the promise he showed at youth team level.
It was nice to see some silverware won by the club, whilst we all want the first team to be winning titles, it is important that the youth team and reserves have successful seasons. For any that do make it through to the first team let's hope it's the first of many.
Fergie won't walk away writes James Lawton, he will be up for his biggest fight. Andy Mitten concurs, and wonders how Fergie can manage to turn such an insurmountable challenge with the financial restraints placed upon him.
The question is will he still be able to compete when the Glazer debt is threatning to handicapp his team out of the race. It seems every summer, especially since Ronaldo left, we all go around saying that the summer transfer dealings are vital to the club's future prsopects. I don't know whether this one will be any more important than any other, it depends on our ambition. To compete for the title again,this is surely the summer where at least one central midfielder has to be brought into the club.
To be honest in reality we need far more than that but given the miracles that Fergie has done with this less than stellar squad, that would probably keep us relatively competitive for the next season's league title. But if we are to not to fall behind, never mind compete in the champions league, big money would need to be spent. It's hard to have any confidence that we will see the kind of tranfer activity we would like to see or that without the gimps debt would easily be affordable.
I have a few idea's about what positions need looking at and where we need to invest, but i'll leave that until after the season has finished.
David McDonnell tells the Mirror's readers that the Glazer's must open their wallets to stop United heading into decline. Over at the sun Steven Howard tells Fergie that he needs to persuade the Glazer's to spend £100 million to stop City drawing away from us.
It's nothing new to most United fans, the fact that we are a team in decline, but it seems to have gained currency across the football punditry world over recent week. Of course relative decline is probably to be expected during a transitional period in a club's history.
We have been in a slow decline since Ronaldo's last season at the club, maybe not in results, but in performance and the reliance on players such as Giggs and Scholes who should have become more squad type players than the vital cogs in the machine that Giggs was last season and that Scholes has been since he came out of retirement in January. The fact that Fergie is desperate to keep Scholes for another season probably tells us what kind of summer we can expect during the summer. I'm not saying i don't want him to sign on for another season, of course i do, but i don't want us to have to rely on him to the extent that we have had to since he came out of retirement.
And this is the worry for us all, that we won't or can't replace these two giants of our recent history. It's not as if this worry is new either, we were saying this before Ronaldo left the club. Of course we have to realise that replacing two such great players is an easy task, in fact i'm positive Scholes isn't replaceable, unless Xavi and Iniesta got pissed off in the Catalan sun and were immune to the financial rewards on offer across the city. But just as we replaced Keane with Carrick, a totally different player, so we have to go forward eventually without Scholes and will have to find someone that can do a job at the very top level in the centre of our midfield, even if he doesn't bring the same qualities to the table.
I must admit i hoped that that we may have been able to get by for a couple of seasons with our limited midfield options until some of our promising youngsters came through. I have a feeling that this was Fergie's long term plan. Well if it was that has been blown apart with Morrison's desparture, Pogba's probable departure and Tunnicliffe's relative failure to progress. The biggest shame was Morrison's unwillingness to grow up, i still think that with the right attitude he would have eventually walked into our first team.
I have to admit i'm fed up reading about Pogba and actually hope the rumours are right and he leaves for Juve. Firstly he obviously hasn't got the right character to be a long term part of out future and secondly if anybody has actually watched our reserves he seriously doesn't deserve the contract that hid agent is apparently arguing for. He may turn out to be the real deal, i'm not sure either way, but i'm sure he won't be ready to play a big part as part of our central midfield over the next couple of seasons. If he had knuckled down and done well for the reserves this season i would have been looking to send him out on loan to a Wigan or a Bolton next season.
I thought Tunnicliffe had reportedly done reasonably well on loan at Peterbrough in the championship but i have to say he hasn't looked to have improved at all from his appearances that i have seen in the reserves since he came back to the club.
We have prospects in the academy system but they are too far from first team football to bring into this end of season moan. I don't really watch enough European football to know how good Hazard, Kagawa or the Gotze's are so i can't really have an opinion there. I really like the looks of Munian of Bilbao, but whether he would leave his basque region and whether he would come to United should United still be able to afford him after his outstanding season who knows. I thought he was magnificent last night during Bilbao's 3-0 defeat in the Europa cup final, both technically and in his fight for the cause.
As for the perennial talk of Modric, i have to say i'm not convinced, whichever you look at it. He's a good player, but i don't ever see him at the very top level in European football, which is what i hope we are looking at. And i'm totally unconvinced by his attitude, his start to the season after failing to get his move to Chelsea and his form loss for Tottenham when the going got the tough at the business end of the season.
All those words and i have only mentioned our midfield problems, i'll allude to other areas of concern with the squad after Sunday has come and gone.
All that talk and i never mentioned Phil Jones who i giddily thought might have found his best position there during one fo our good spells of form during the first half of the season. Ok i probably got that wrong, though i still think he will be able to do a job there in the future. I notice his first half season form has been totally forgotten on the messageboards in all the doom and gloom abounding at the moment.
He was excellent for the most part during that phase of the season, his dodgier games were at centre half where Fergie hopes he will become the bedrock of the team. But he was only 19 and during that first part of the season our defence hardly got any protection from the players in front of him, so it was to be expected really. The injuries at christmas seem to set him right back and he never really came back the same player after that, which he alludes to himself in this piece. Which was a pity because we could have done with some of those barnstorming forward runs we saw during those excting first couple of months of the season over the title run.
I would have liked him to go the Euro's this summer to get vital top class experience for his United future, i'm not so sure any more. It may be the case that a complete summer's rest would be better for us and him next season. If Capello had still been manager he was a certainty to go, i'm not so sure Hodgson will be so keen to be so reliant on him. Though looking at John Terry's form recently and Ferdinand's inability to play back to back games who knows. The news that Chris Smalling will not now be going in the summer probably means that Jones will be travelling with England at the summer
Anybody thinking England have a chance at the Euros must surely be hoping Hodgson doesn't go with Ferdinand and Terry during the summer whilst playing 4-4-2 because that is an accident waiting to happen.
John O'shea warns United not to expect any favours and lets slip that he couldn't believe United had let an 8 point title lead slip. If he had stayed at United this season there is every chance that could have ended up first choice left back. I would certainly have preferred going to the recent derby with O'Shea at left back instead of Erva. Add in our centre back troubles in mid season and he was a big big loss to Manchester United footbal club this season. There were rumours that he had to go to keep the wage bill down to allow last summer's purchases, if so, that was one false economy.
The MEN report that Gary Neville's Old trafford hotel plans are set to get the go ahead. I thought the plans were for a club house but anyhow i wasn't actually that bothered it about really, i can remember O'Neill badgering Neville about this years ago at an IMUSA meeting in those days when those things actually happened. But the fact that United decided to object to the proposals, led me to hope it would get the go ahead, that says everything about the way club i support is run, i suppose.
I doubt i'll go in much, but if it becomes a real fans club, not a day trippers experience it can only be a good thing.
The Portuges police are investigating the transfer of Bebe to United, but United say they have nothing to hide, no but there will be face to lose and ridicule to held up to. I'm not sure we can blame the Glazer's for this one.
Elsewhere i was asked why the referendums for city's mayor mattered and i answered that to me, mayor or no mayor the important thing was for powers to be devolved back from whitehall to local goverment. I didn't want it for Manchester that's for sure. I was then asked what an elected mayor would do, and i answered in London and most big cities he would be answerable for the public transport system and the other big concern should be social housing.
A London mayor has control of London transport, which of course makes them unique in this country as the Thactherites privatised it for everyone else, which gives you some idea about the priority they give the capital over the regions. And we know all councils have their hands tied over social housing. So what the proponents think city mayor's would make i still cannot grasp. To me they would just be personality contests as indeed it seemed to me London's election's were. Where the boost to democracy comes from in that i am at a loss to know.
Far more important to the state of the health of this countries democratic health is the gap between the super rich and the rest as described in John Gray's review of Ferdinand Mount's latest book.
A fascinating piece on the world of the city of London as a derivative trader tells his interviewer that the trouble is regulators are idiots.
Paul Mason gives his take on what the political situation is post election and quite possibly pre-election, he could have labelled it catch 22, with the Greek people as Yossarian.
This is for Fergie as watches the summer's transfer activity
As ever with the reserves, it seems to be more about giving players a game rather than about picking the best balanced team and the first half saw United struggle to mount any serious pressure on Villa's goal. An example would be the ninety minutes from Larnell Cole, who when stuck out on the right in the first half couldn't get into the game at all or should i say he couldn't affect the game. He doesn't have the pace to play out wide and the lack of an attacking right back didn't help his cause. Once he was switched into the middle at the beginning the second half there was a drastic improvement in his game and United's ability to effectively use the possession and eventually to dominate for periods. If you watched that first half you would have said he would struggle to have a career in professional football, but if you had watched the second, you'd have come away enthused by his technique and ability to use the ball against bigger opponents. Despite missing a great chance, Will Keane once more caught the eye with an eye catching performance.
Others to catch the eye were Michael Keane with his tremedous runs out od defence and for the most part his good use of the ball. He has tremendous pace and seems to be able to recover postions as Ferdinand did before his legs and back went. Whether he will be strong enough to make it at centre half at first team level is the question. One thought occured to me last night, with those long raking runs he makes, it might well be worth trying him at right back at some stage, he could make a great over lapping right back. Petrucci was decent in the first half but he seemed to fizzle out during the second half.
My man of the match would have to have been Jesse Lingard, who was excellent and got stronger as the game went on. I'm not sure i have ever seen him have a bad game. I won't say it's a shame he isn't bigger, it's more a case that i wish he was more powerful. He doesn't seem to really have a best position, he started out wide last night as he usually does but his best work is nearly always done during the latter stages of a game where he roams across the pitch and just behind the forward.
Needless to say Johnstone had a great shoot out but he was just as impressive during the ninety minutes as well as making a couple of great saves. Tunnicliffe gave us a few of his trademark forward runs in the first half but was a disappointment again for me, his first touch and use of the ball weren't good enough. He gets caught on the ball too much for someone who has a chance to make it at the top level. It maybe he has hit a dip in form, but he doesn't look like he is going to fulfil the promise he showed at youth team level.
It was nice to see some silverware won by the club, whilst we all want the first team to be winning titles, it is important that the youth team and reserves have successful seasons. For any that do make it through to the first team let's hope it's the first of many.
Fergie won't walk away writes James Lawton, he will be up for his biggest fight. Andy Mitten concurs, and wonders how Fergie can manage to turn such an insurmountable challenge with the financial restraints placed upon him.
The question is will he still be able to compete when the Glazer debt is threatning to handicapp his team out of the race. It seems every summer, especially since Ronaldo left, we all go around saying that the summer transfer dealings are vital to the club's future prsopects. I don't know whether this one will be any more important than any other, it depends on our ambition. To compete for the title again,this is surely the summer where at least one central midfielder has to be brought into the club.
To be honest in reality we need far more than that but given the miracles that Fergie has done with this less than stellar squad, that would probably keep us relatively competitive for the next season's league title. But if we are to not to fall behind, never mind compete in the champions league, big money would need to be spent. It's hard to have any confidence that we will see the kind of tranfer activity we would like to see or that without the gimps debt would easily be affordable.
I have a few idea's about what positions need looking at and where we need to invest, but i'll leave that until after the season has finished.
David McDonnell tells the Mirror's readers that the Glazer's must open their wallets to stop United heading into decline. Over at the sun Steven Howard tells Fergie that he needs to persuade the Glazer's to spend £100 million to stop City drawing away from us.
It's nothing new to most United fans, the fact that we are a team in decline, but it seems to have gained currency across the football punditry world over recent week. Of course relative decline is probably to be expected during a transitional period in a club's history.
We have been in a slow decline since Ronaldo's last season at the club, maybe not in results, but in performance and the reliance on players such as Giggs and Scholes who should have become more squad type players than the vital cogs in the machine that Giggs was last season and that Scholes has been since he came out of retirement in January. The fact that Fergie is desperate to keep Scholes for another season probably tells us what kind of summer we can expect during the summer. I'm not saying i don't want him to sign on for another season, of course i do, but i don't want us to have to rely on him to the extent that we have had to since he came out of retirement.
And this is the worry for us all, that we won't or can't replace these two giants of our recent history. It's not as if this worry is new either, we were saying this before Ronaldo left the club. Of course we have to realise that replacing two such great players is an easy task, in fact i'm positive Scholes isn't replaceable, unless Xavi and Iniesta got pissed off in the Catalan sun and were immune to the financial rewards on offer across the city. But just as we replaced Keane with Carrick, a totally different player, so we have to go forward eventually without Scholes and will have to find someone that can do a job at the very top level in the centre of our midfield, even if he doesn't bring the same qualities to the table.
I must admit i hoped that that we may have been able to get by for a couple of seasons with our limited midfield options until some of our promising youngsters came through. I have a feeling that this was Fergie's long term plan. Well if it was that has been blown apart with Morrison's desparture, Pogba's probable departure and Tunnicliffe's relative failure to progress. The biggest shame was Morrison's unwillingness to grow up, i still think that with the right attitude he would have eventually walked into our first team.
I have to admit i'm fed up reading about Pogba and actually hope the rumours are right and he leaves for Juve. Firstly he obviously hasn't got the right character to be a long term part of out future and secondly if anybody has actually watched our reserves he seriously doesn't deserve the contract that hid agent is apparently arguing for. He may turn out to be the real deal, i'm not sure either way, but i'm sure he won't be ready to play a big part as part of our central midfield over the next couple of seasons. If he had knuckled down and done well for the reserves this season i would have been looking to send him out on loan to a Wigan or a Bolton next season.
I thought Tunnicliffe had reportedly done reasonably well on loan at Peterbrough in the championship but i have to say he hasn't looked to have improved at all from his appearances that i have seen in the reserves since he came back to the club.
We have prospects in the academy system but they are too far from first team football to bring into this end of season moan. I don't really watch enough European football to know how good Hazard, Kagawa or the Gotze's are so i can't really have an opinion there. I really like the looks of Munian of Bilbao, but whether he would leave his basque region and whether he would come to United should United still be able to afford him after his outstanding season who knows. I thought he was magnificent last night during Bilbao's 3-0 defeat in the Europa cup final, both technically and in his fight for the cause.
As for the perennial talk of Modric, i have to say i'm not convinced, whichever you look at it. He's a good player, but i don't ever see him at the very top level in European football, which is what i hope we are looking at. And i'm totally unconvinced by his attitude, his start to the season after failing to get his move to Chelsea and his form loss for Tottenham when the going got the tough at the business end of the season.
All those words and i have only mentioned our midfield problems, i'll allude to other areas of concern with the squad after Sunday has come and gone.
All that talk and i never mentioned Phil Jones who i giddily thought might have found his best position there during one fo our good spells of form during the first half of the season. Ok i probably got that wrong, though i still think he will be able to do a job there in the future. I notice his first half season form has been totally forgotten on the messageboards in all the doom and gloom abounding at the moment.
He was excellent for the most part during that phase of the season, his dodgier games were at centre half where Fergie hopes he will become the bedrock of the team. But he was only 19 and during that first part of the season our defence hardly got any protection from the players in front of him, so it was to be expected really. The injuries at christmas seem to set him right back and he never really came back the same player after that, which he alludes to himself in this piece. Which was a pity because we could have done with some of those barnstorming forward runs we saw during those excting first couple of months of the season over the title run.
I would have liked him to go the Euro's this summer to get vital top class experience for his United future, i'm not so sure any more. It may be the case that a complete summer's rest would be better for us and him next season. If Capello had still been manager he was a certainty to go, i'm not so sure Hodgson will be so keen to be so reliant on him. Though looking at John Terry's form recently and Ferdinand's inability to play back to back games who knows. The news that Chris Smalling will not now be going in the summer probably means that Jones will be travelling with England at the summer
Anybody thinking England have a chance at the Euros must surely be hoping Hodgson doesn't go with Ferdinand and Terry during the summer whilst playing 4-4-2 because that is an accident waiting to happen.
John O'shea warns United not to expect any favours and lets slip that he couldn't believe United had let an 8 point title lead slip. If he had stayed at United this season there is every chance that could have ended up first choice left back. I would certainly have preferred going to the recent derby with O'Shea at left back instead of Erva. Add in our centre back troubles in mid season and he was a big big loss to Manchester United footbal club this season. There were rumours that he had to go to keep the wage bill down to allow last summer's purchases, if so, that was one false economy.
The MEN report that Gary Neville's Old trafford hotel plans are set to get the go ahead. I thought the plans were for a club house but anyhow i wasn't actually that bothered it about really, i can remember O'Neill badgering Neville about this years ago at an IMUSA meeting in those days when those things actually happened. But the fact that United decided to object to the proposals, led me to hope it would get the go ahead, that says everything about the way club i support is run, i suppose.
I doubt i'll go in much, but if it becomes a real fans club, not a day trippers experience it can only be a good thing.
The Portuges police are investigating the transfer of Bebe to United, but United say they have nothing to hide, no but there will be face to lose and ridicule to held up to. I'm not sure we can blame the Glazer's for this one.
Elsewhere i was asked why the referendums for city's mayor mattered and i answered that to me, mayor or no mayor the important thing was for powers to be devolved back from whitehall to local goverment. I didn't want it for Manchester that's for sure. I was then asked what an elected mayor would do, and i answered in London and most big cities he would be answerable for the public transport system and the other big concern should be social housing.
A London mayor has control of London transport, which of course makes them unique in this country as the Thactherites privatised it for everyone else, which gives you some idea about the priority they give the capital over the regions. And we know all councils have their hands tied over social housing. So what the proponents think city mayor's would make i still cannot grasp. To me they would just be personality contests as indeed it seemed to me London's election's were. Where the boost to democracy comes from in that i am at a loss to know.
Far more important to the state of the health of this countries democratic health is the gap between the super rich and the rest as described in John Gray's review of Ferdinand Mount's latest book.
A fascinating piece on the world of the city of London as a derivative trader tells his interviewer that the trouble is regulators are idiots.
Paul Mason gives his take on what the political situation is post election and quite possibly pre-election, he could have labelled it catch 22, with the Greek people as Yossarian.
This is for Fergie as watches the summer's transfer activity
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