Monday, August 08, 2011

Football season begins

The Charity Shield is a pre-season football match between the League Champions and the FA cup winners, which is usually used as a last training run before the season opens. It is seldom a proper match, but yesterday's event was more than that. For one thing it was a grudge match between the two Manchester Clubs, City who have been taken over by an Arab who owned one fifth of the Word's oil reserves and United who are the most successful British Club ever.

City have bought established players from around the world while United have bought young British players. The result was an injury time 3-2 win for United. What made the game exceptional was a wonder goal conjured up by the new boy, Tom Cleverly, together with old (but only 25) stagers Rooney and Nani. Man Utd policy of training up very young players and retaining them as long as they are happy seems to pay off. In their squad are seven strikers: Rooney, Berbatov, Owen, Wellbeck, Diouf, Macheda and Hernandez as well as Young and Giggs who have played there. Midfielders now include Giggs, Fletcher, Anderson, Carrick, Nani, Cleverly, Young, Park, Gibson and Valencia and defenders include the two Da Silva twins, Smalling, Evans, Vidic, Jones, Ferdinand and Evra and there are three goalkeepers in DeGea, Kurszczak and Lindegaard. There are a few who may be on their way out like Obertan and Bebe, but 9 other youngsters are signed up for the 1st team squad.

I can't see that spending £32 million and breaking the wage structure for Wesley Sneijder from Inter is a good idea. With this squad they should see off both Chelsea and Man City for the foreseeable future.

The season starts anew next weekend.

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