Denial

In the spirit of renewed regular blogging I bring this story speculating about Ronaldo, a subject previously avoided. Anyway, it's his sister saying that he wants to stay at Old Trafford:

"Cristiano wants to keep playing at Manchester United," Ronaldo's sister, Elma Aveiro, told the Sun. "Real Madrid keep making very strong advances for him. There is a lot of speculation in the newspapers all the time about where he will go and what he is doing but we know who he really is and what he is really up to. He wants to stay at United."

There's a stupid story in The Daily Mail entitled "Ronaldo plots Queiroz exit", which amounts to this:

When Scolari’s departure was confirmed on Chelsea’s website, and Portugal subsequently bowed out of Euro 2008 against Germany, Ronaldo and his team-mates met to discuss potential replacements and came down overwhelmingly in favour of Queiroz.

A petition was drawn up and signed by several players, including Ronaldo, imploring Madail to install Queiroz as their new boss.

So much for plotting, and very unlike the Mail to sensationalize anything...

This story by Oliver Kay in The Times on Ronaldo's injury is interesting for one very stupid sentence:

Real are willing to pay a world-record fee in excess of £50 million to sign Ronaldo — and, according to sources in Spain, would be prepared to bid more than £80 million to get their man — but United maintain that he is not for sale. They have appeared to be in denial about Ronaldo’s intentions for much of the summer, but now that he has spoken of his “dream” of moving to Real, their stance has hardened.

Ummmm. Firstly I'm not exactly sure how we've been in denial, certainly all our official statements on the matter haven't suggested denial: a prime case of newspapers believing all the rubbish speculation they print. Secondly the sentence doesn't even make sense. We were in denial but now our stance has hardened. Where does one go from denial exactly? Surely a more accurate sentence would have read "They have consistently maintained he is not for sale, a stance which hasn't changed." Would that have been too easy?