Cleverley to come back

Ferguson has told inside United magazine that though Cleverley was going to stay all season he is now going to come back in the new year. I'll bet Wigan are not impressed, but will keep quiet to kepp well in with United for future loanee's. Great news for United, you won't be surprised to hear me say. Fergie's reasons for letting him go still sound more than a bit hollow to me. He will be like a new signing, how long before we here that.

All the papers are reporting on United tracking Danish goalie Anders Lindegaard as a possible replacement for Van Der Sar, with the news that goalkeeping coach Erc Steele has been scouting him last week.

It looks like Richie De Laet has made a decnt start to his loan period at Bramhall lane with the news that Gary Speed wants to extend his loan. I should think that Fergie will be happy with the news and would be happy to let him stay.
Scott Wooton had a dream debut for Tranmere scoring a an equaliser and impressing as centre back on his first start.

United's indifferent premier league start seems to have cajoled agents into linking their players with a move to old trafford, Diarra is the latest.

From the farcical to the surreal, Liverpool board agrees to sell the club to Boston red sox. But wait there is a catch, there is a boardoom civil war over the civil war with the two yanks set to start legal proceedings. I can't see any of that going down well with the fans. Who would joinn that club, i bet Gerrard and Torres wish they could turn the clock back. Robert Peston writes that Hicks and Gillet are perched precariously between the devil and the deep blue water and that administration is still a live option.
David Conn explains the mess that the club are in.

It sounds like the Mancini - Tevez truce that that was sealed by making the Argentinian captain hasn't worked with the news that they has a another row at half time on Sunday. Whilst i wouldn't want to hazard a guess to Tevez's motives, ulterior motives knowing the way he and his owners work, he does have more than a point about Mancini's tactics which are unbelievably negative.

Joseph Sitglitz is pessimistic about the future of the Euro and the world economy in general, he is worried about the prospects for Spain as well as Ireland following the Greek debacle.
Stephen King completely disagrees, wondering how Greece, Ireland and Spain would go about reinventing defunct currencies. In fact he thinks it could in fact be the catalyst for greater integration.
Jon Snow blogs on the links between property specualtors, the banks and government officials in the lead up to Ireland's economic meltdown.
After praising the coalition governments cuts programme, the IMF admits that western economies may be stuck in near depression conditions. And it says that is a good time cut!
Larry Elliott explains why trade wars may seem like a good idea to central banks that have run out of all other policy options. Paul Krugman thinks whilst it mat seem like a good idea, the parallels with the thirties in this case would be misleading and in his opinion whilst they won't be as harmful as some economists imagine they won't be as helpful as it's protagonists claim either.

The right seem to be as up in arms if not more, over the child benefits cuts announced by Osborne yesterday for those earning over £44,000. I don't know whether this is an attack on the universal welfare state, but i am in support in of a simplification of the system and fully expect whoever forms the next government to stick with the broad principle of this reform, the universal credit. It doesn't necessarily have to be a regressive reform.
Hopi Sen writes on his blog that the tories have got themselves in right old mess and are apeing Gordon Brown at his worst, ouch! 
Benedict Brogan of the Torygraph is less than impressed by number tens inept handling of affairs wondering if this is how it handles a single measure what will happen when things get really tough.
Bagehot reports on a tory party conference that doesn't know what to make of it or what it thinks of it.

Spiked contributor Natalie Rothschild looks at the recent Swedish election and see a political class remote from its electorate. She thinks the countries historically successful social democrats have completely lost touch with the parties roots and the success of the far right should be read in this light.

Hated by the daily mail praises Stephen Fry for sticking up to the Daily hate

Peter Salmon, head of BBC north compares the opening of media city to the canal that it sits next to and hope it can match the historical importance of the glory years of the Manchester ship canal.
Meanwhile the government has revealed that its predecessors plans for a high speed rail from London to Manchester will get the go ahead but it will have to done in phases. I'm pleasantly surprised, i didn't think that would survive the cuts.
Manchester university has got itslef onto the news pages thanks the nobel prize award for physics that went to two Russian scientists working there who discovered the two dimensional material graphene.

 I finally got around to watching the final part of this England 86 last night and as this blog rightly says the series finally took off in the final two parts when Meadows apparently took over the directorial chair. The first episode was awful. I know the first episode of a series can be slow as you get to know the characters or in this case reaquaint yourselves with them, but that was similar and about as bad as Shameless has become. The second part wasn't bad but it really got interesting during the third part before last night's gripping finale.

Sunderland 0-0 Manchester United

Now this is getting worrying, not the result, but the performance, yet again. The worst thing for me yesterday is when i saw the team Fergie had selected i knew exactly what we were going to get and that was that dire first 45 minutes. There are differing opinions on the highpoint of the last 5 years, i go for the 2006-7 season whilst other go for the season after when we did league and champions league double. What is undeniable is that since we lifted the chmpions league trophy that night in Moscow we have been in decline, slowly at first, more noticeable last season and now accelerating alarmingly. We have less realy special players than we have had since the 2003-2006 barren spell and the reliance on Giggs and Scholes to create is now really starting to worry me.
We have far too many ordinary players all over the park for me to be very confident about the future. The lack of signings and our supposed transfer strategy of only buying players of a certain age is starting to drag us down. I hadn't seriously thought City could challenge us this season. But the more i watch us this season, the more horribly realistic that now seems. We have laughed at Liverpool over the last couple of seasons, but it's been a nervous laughter, because we have known what has happened over there could all so easily be what is in store for us. No money to buy the top players needed to compete for the league title and the possibility of seeing your best players leave to go to clubs that will compete.
That £50 million or whatever it is now that goes out of this club every year to pay the debt the Glazers have saddled the club with, that in a pre-Glazer world would have been used to identify and sign Giggs and Scholes successors is now starting to seriously impact the club on the field. Fergie goes on about youngsters being the fiuture of the club but hardly ever picks them. I know we have some talented youngsters on the books but only Cleverley and Welbeck look like they have first team squad written on them for sure and they are both on out on loan for the season. I agreed with the Welbeck loan move but at the risk of sounding like a broken record i am still totally bemused by the decision to send Cleverley out. The way we are playing at the moment, given an injury free spell, he could well have established himslef as one of our main players.
As to yesterday's game, once again he picked a totally unbalanced front three and once again we got the performance that the selection deserved. I don't know whthere you would call yesterday 4-4-2 or 4-3-3 because i haven't a clue who was supposed to be playing on the left. I am not going to bang on about Owen, he isn't a United player full stop, and we gave the kind of performance that i and anybody with half a brain should have expected Owen to give in that formation. When he was at his peak, and he wasn't all he was cracked up to be even then, he was the type of centre forward who relies totally on service from midfiled and the flanks. There is absolutely nothing else to his game, so what Fergie expects to get from him in a fluid front three i am totally at a loss to see.
I'm not sure what to make of Macheda as a United prospect, he would be behind Welbeck and King, that's for sure. But i have to feel sorry for him having to have to come into a struggling side without it's best forwards and then to be shunted out onto the left  and then play up front with Owen with no recognisable left winger or even left sided midfielder. He is another out and out centre forward who needs to play in a proper 4-4-2 at this stage of his career. Of the front three selected to start yesterday there was only Nani playing in a position comfortable to him, and though he has had a decent season so far he still blows hot and cold far too much for the team to rely on him to be the man to deliver the creativity we need. His play acting yesterday was beyond embarrassing as well, really fucking cringeworthy.
Anderson came in for his first league start of the season and reminded me why i would have been happy to have seen him leave the club in the summer. Coming back from injury is no excuse for constantly giving the ball away which was his contribution to yesterdays proceedings. Somebody should check his birth certificate, is he really a Brazillian because he is one of the least skillful players in our squad and that's saying something at the moment. Fletcher hasn't made a great start to the season and i fear the amount of games he is going to be asked to play he will probably not get anywhere near the form he showed in the first half of last season before his heavy workload afected him in the closing stages. If Hargreaves is really going to figure in first team plans the sooner he comes back to relieve the strain on Flecther and Scholes the better. Scholes had one of his quieter games yesterday but we can't expect him to be the man to the main man every week. And the way Anderson performed Scholes and Fletcher were a man light in central midfield. I have said it before but we rely to an embarrassing degree on our two elderly statesmen to produce the creativity needed to lift you above the ordinary.
At least with the introduction of Berbatov for Owen at half time the front line started to look at least a little like a Manchester United forward line up should. It became a more open game at times and we did have a couple of chances to snatch an undeserved win. But unlike in Spain this time we had no last minute heroics.
I don't know whether this a good time to be having a two week break or not, but Fergie has lot of thinking to do over that two weeks.

Michael Carrick does not want to leave United. As bad as his form was during the climax to last season and his gradual decline over the last two seasons, the lack of alternatives leads me to think Fergie should give him another chance. Even when not at his best, he is still a better player than Anderson and Scholes and Fletcher need to be rested every so often to get the best out of them. We badly need more bodies in central midfield.
The Mail report that Hargreaves has been pencilled in for a return in the carling cup tie at home to Wolves in three weeks time. I still can't help but be sceptical over this.

Rooney wants to play his way out of his slump in form, i have said it before, when we play 4-3-3, as long as he is willing, and even if he isn't, he should be the man used on the left. We can hardly do any worse than play him at the moment anyway, we need all the top players we can get into that strting eleven.
He says he need sto play to get through this, "he is only a human being".

Yet another interview with Ryan Giggs, this time in yesterday's Guardian.

Lee Dixon doesn't want to point out the flaw in Wengers current Arsenal side, but he does anyway.

Mike Gonzalez discussess what is really going on in Ecuador after last weeks police revolt against Rafael Correa. I would have though Obama was the man to stop the ultimately self defeating US meddling in Latin American affairs, but it seems not. China will pick up the pieces.

John Rentoul seems to have changed his views on Ed Miliband remarkably quickly. Whilst Ken Clarke gives us a realitic interview in which he admits a double dip recession is a distinct possibility. 
Andrew Rawnsley argues that Cameron has still not healed the rupture with the right wing of the tory party and that it could busrt out into the open at any time.

Tricky is back with a new album, now based in Paris he thinks this country has lost his individuality. I am looking forward to hearing it, i though his last album was pretty good.

Rooney will be alright!

Ryan Giggs tells Wayne Rooney to concentrate of the football pitch. He tells him he will get used to it in the end and i might even improve him. It may or it may not, unfortunately not everybody is the same, i'm pretty sure i would never get used to it. Stever Bruce even predicts that we may see the shock selection of Rooney tomorrow. That isn't a bad call, he obviously know how Fergie works, i can't see it this time myself, but i wouldn't be amazed if he was in the starting line up tomorrow.

Ferguson will not speak to the press for a month now in retaliation for the press accusing him of calling Torres a cheat, which he apparently didn't.

The Guardian reports that Rio Ferdinand is now ready to kick on with his season. Oh the cynic in me just has to say till the next injury. Everybody knows, surely including even himself, there is know way he will play back to back games this season or in fact possibly ever again.

Yet another youngster goes out on loan this time Scott Wooton goes back to his birthplace as signs on for the month with Tranmere Rovers. It's hard to know which of the defenders we have on the books have got a chance. None stand out as much as Pique did, but Wooton and Reece Brown do seem to have something about them.

City's latest financial results show that their wage bill was higher than their turnover. Christ what will the results show next season. That is some pressure on Mancini, if they don't get into that top four place at the end of the season, he will be out, end of, simple as.

The Irish government has had to come to the rescue of its second biggest bank Allied Irish as the crisis deepens. Hamish McRae warns his readers not to give up on the celtic tiger yet, things are bad, but not quite as bad as they appear. Whilst Jeremy Warner doesn't thank Gordon Brown but should for keeping us out of the Euro and leaving us with the option to devalue our currency. It's amazing how some of the orthodoxies of the 30 years have just disappeared as if it those 30 years never happened. Devaluation was supposed to be a sign of weakness.

Music
Alberta cross - Broken side of time: A decent album of indie rock, nothing out of the ordinary though.
Cluster - Zuckerzeit: Krautrock from the 70's and typically excellent stuff it is.
El goodo - Coyote: An album for all the 60's lovers as it's firmly rooted in that decade. It's a good album they tred as similar furrow as the coral at times but without the scousers invention.
Four tet - There is love in you: More post rock techno from one of my favourite current acts. Does he release anything less than excellent?
Jefferson Airplane - Surrealitic pillow: One of "the" San Francisco 60's psychadelic rock groups, this was their second album. It's good, i suppose the hit singles helped elevate them above the 13th floor elevators and longevity of course.
Jimmy Cliff - The harder they come: A classic reggae compilation fromthe 70's film of the same name. There are some "tunes" on this.
M. Ward - Hold time: I have heard this guy being namechecked quite a few times by different artists and by the music press but this is the first time i have really listened to him. I can see what the fuss is about, it's an excellent record, the cover of Rave on with Zooey Dechanel is shit hot.