Apologies to Insect Life

Just some stories on the Pogatetz tackle this morning.  What is perhaps surprising is that they all (almost all) choose to relate Pogatetz's apology without comment.  Even though it is a rather self-serving-I-didn't-do-anything-wrong type apology.  Here it is, quoted from The Daily Star:

“Firstly,
I have to say that I went for the tackle because I thought I could win
the ball. I now accept that I misjudged the challenge.



“Immediately after the incident I did not think it was a red-card offence because I did win the ball.

“But now that I have had the chance to see the tackle on television, I know the ref was right to send me off.

“I am going to speak to Rodrigo by phone and I will apologise for
hurting him. I hope that he will make a quick recovery and will not be
out for long.”

Wha this basically amounts to is, "I didn't do anything wrong, but I guess it looked bad".  Is that acceptable?  You launch into a dreadful tackle like that and you think there's nothing wrong with it?
Most of the stories combine this apology from Pogatetz with the story about The FA thinking of introducing a sliding scale for suspensions based on the severity of the challenge, for instance this from The Times.  Obviously this is, in some way, an implicit criticism of the tackle, but it still lets off Pogatetz too easily as far as I'm concerned.  Only this story from Daniel Taylor in The Guardian includes further condemnation of Pogatetz, from Giggs and Gary Pallister:

"You can mistime a tackle now and again but he was sliding over the
ball," said Ryan Giggs, United's captain during a 3-1 victory for
Ferguson's team. "That was a bad challenge and the referee has rightly
sent him off."

Pallister was even more critical. "Everyone knew
immediately it was a bad one," he said. "Pogatetz tried to give it the
innocent look but when you see it in slow motion he's actually hit the
ball first but the angle he is tackling he knows he is going to hit
Possebon's leg. And he does - with great force. Pogatetz has got that
part to his game sometimes. He likes to steam in but this was a bad one
and he is going to have to face the consequences."

Tony Cascarino has another in a series of stupid opinions:

The challenge by Pogatetz on Possebon was a red card, but no further
action is justified. It’s not the worst tackle I’ve seen this season by
a long way, but the follow-through as Pogatetz came sliding in, with
his studs showing, could easily have broken Possebon’s leg.

Fortunately that hasn’t happened, but we can’t be judging tackles solely on whether or not people end up in hospital.

Firstly, I've seen a few bad challenges this season, but to suggest that this tackle was "a long way" from being the worst is, well, pretty strange.  It's a short way.  Certainly one of the worst.  If I had a top ten it would certainly be in there.  First he says it wasn't a bad challenge, then he says it could have broken Possebon's leg, then he says you can't judge a tackle on whether someone goes to hospital or not.  Now, pardon me, but if you go into a tackle, an insanely reckless tackle that could send someone to hospital, shouldn't you be punished.  I agree that whether  or not said player actually goes to hospital or not is incidental.  But hospital threatening tackles should be treated more severely than non hospital threatening tackles, shouldn't they?  And as he's admitted that Pogatetz could have broken Possebon's leg, this would be one of those cases.  It's not like it was some accidental collision.  It was straight out assault. I certainly don't think it was, to quote Cascarino, "mistimed by a split second".  It was a horrendous tackle, not due to a mistiming, but due to his jumping in off the ground and attacking Possebon with both feet. 
The only mistiming could have been that Pogatetz intended to break his leg and just missed, and even I don't think that was the intention...

Bad Behaviour

A good win in the Carling Cup soured by the injury to Possebon.  Thankfully Possebon hasn't broken his leg (or, more accurately, Pogatetz hasn't broken Possebon's leg).  Sir Alex on the tackle:

"For the kid to be making his first start for us, and then to get an
injury like that, is pretty horrendous. It really was a terrible
tackle. I've seen one replay of it and I don't want to see it again.

"The
thing about challenges like that is the offender always seems to claim
he is innocent. Pogatetz should have walked straight off. When you see
it, dearie me, it's horrendous. For 10 minutes afterwards, I think
everyone was numb about it."

Anyway, to the game.  It was an easy enough game, we looked by far the better team and it was one of those games where it was perhaps too easy, allowing Boro back into it.  The Guardian report suggests that the sending off was the turning point, but really we were in control for the whole game and Boro scored one lucky goal, so The Guardian's assertion that "Pogatetz's sending-off drastically changed the complexion of the game", is slightly wide of the mark.

Most bizarre description of the day must go to The Telegraph who describe Gigg's goal thus: "Giggs seized on a long punt upfield and
curled his shot beautifully into the Stretford End net."  Yeah, it was a nice finish, but the long punt upfield was straight to Boro's Riggot who layed the ball nicely into Giggs's path.

The Times report on the match concludes with Sir Alex's words on Ronaldo, which are reported widely:

“Just as Italians playing abroad all dream of playing one day for Juventus
or the Milan clubs, so southern Europeans want at some point to play for
Real Madrid or Barcelona,” Ferguson said. “So I understood what was going on
in Cristiano’s mind when he declared that he wanted to join Real, but once
we had talked, he accepted it was a move for the future. I pointed out how
much better it would be to leave like Eric Cantona, with the fans loving and
appreciating him.”

Missing Link

Just noticed this report in The Guardian which includes a good paragraph on the referee and reinforces the point that too many reports were prepared to ignore the uselessness of Mike Riley to have a go at us:

But a point apiece was a fair result from a game which, while
intriguing, never had much flow because of the officiousness of Mike
Riley. He blew constantly, like a 1950s child playing at being a
traffic policemen after finding a whistle in his Christmas stocking. It
wasn't a dirty game, yet Riley flashed eight yellows - seven at United
players, just the one at Chelsea blue - missed a blatant Ronaldo dive,
and generally got more things wrong than right. He even blew for time
early, to general confusion, having initially appeared to have given a
foul against Rio Ferdinand, prompting the United defender to call him a
"shit ref" as he walked off.

More Yellow Birds

The papers are a mixed bag this morning, some criticising us, others praising us, no institutional bias might be the inference but I like to think that we played well enough that even (some of) the haters have to give us some credit.  Were it not for piece of sloppy defending we'd have had all 3 points - at least we halved the sloppiness from the week before...

What hasn't changed is the agenda against Wayne Rooney.  Take this from The Daily Star, or this from The Independent, both argue that it was Rooney's fault we lost the goal as he gave the free kick away in an act of "petulance".  Yes, he did give the free kick away and, yes, it was a stupid foul, but it was from a position that should have made it a piece of cake to defend - why didn't Kuszczack just come and claim it?  Blaming such sloppiness on Rooney giving the initial free kick away is just perverse.

And another thing, 7 bookings?  7?!  And the papers reaction to that?  It was deserved, Chelsea were really fair and thus only had one booking.  Brilliant.  In The Guardian we have the suggestion that Sir Alex was only having a go at the ref because we didn't win:

Blaming the referee is nearly always a cop-out, of course, but it is
also Ferguson's way of letting off steam when the heat of his emotion
is rising dangerously close to intolerable.

The Independent headline their collection of quotes with one from Scolari -"[The referee is there for this.] If the players do not respect the
referee, then it is yellow and red. [Same for Manchester, Chelsea and
Liverpool.]" - to lead us to the "right" conclusion.  3 of our bookings were for dissent, Ronaldo's especially was a joke, a slight indication he was pushed when he wasn't given a free kick, dissent?  Ashley Cole did his usual whining routine on several occasions and got nothing, Joe Cole scythed down someone (my memory...) and got a quiet word.  Riley had an awful game.  Berbatov was penalised everytime he jumped for a ball and was eventually booked for persistently ... jumping for the ball?! 
Sir Alex probably says it best in this piece:

Park Ji-sung, United's scorer, appeared to suggest a certain bias –
"Chelsea players made the same tackle they didn't get a yellow card,"
he said, although his moderate grasp of English may have been
responsible for that basic verdict. However, his manager, Sir Alex
Ferguson, was more bemused than angry. "The game is being screened
worldwide," he said. "Everyone is watching it and something like that
goes on. It was a competitive game but I did not think there was one
bad tackle in it." Apart from Ferdinand and Cristiano Ronaldo, Paul
Scholes, Dimitar Berbatov, Gary Neville, Wayne Rooney and Patrice Evra
were cautioned. "People are saying, 'What is going on here?' But it is
difficult to say anything about the referee," added Ferguson. "I do not
want to get involved."

I'll just finish with two of the better articles, this, from Daniel Taylor in The Guardian, is pretty reasonable, previously quoted passage excepted:

The upshot is that United have won only one of their opening four
Premier League fixtures, taken only five points and scored only four
goals. It is far from the start that anyone in the football world could
have foreseen. But let's not exaggerate United's problems or dust off
any of those cliches about a "crumbling empire." This is still the team
that won the Champions League and Premier League last season and, for
long spells yesterday, it felt faintly preposterous that anyone could
genuinely have believed that a side of this talent could somehow be on
the verge of surrendering the second of those titles when it is the
fourth week of September.

And David Pleat, as ever, has a decent look at the tactics of the game, also in The Guardian:

United had the better of the game to begin with, Berbatov's
unhurried play giving Scholes and Rooney good opportunities to support.
United's lead was deserved and owed as much to the touch of Berbatov
and the vision of Rooney as the dash of Patrice Evra's run.

Chelsea
tried to respond but with Bosingwa and Ashley Cole pinned back, Florent
Malouda looking a "nearly man" and Joe Cole failing to assert himself,
it needed Scolari's repositioning of Mikel to bring Chelsea the upper
hand.

The Lone Official

Mike Riley is the referee for the Chelsea game.  I'm always in two minds about Riley, especially since the last couple of seasons he seems to have taken the more traditional give-Liverpool-every-decision-going approach, more so than previously anyway.  The most "interesting" part of the story from The Telegraph is this:

Ferguson and Everton manager David Moyes have both railed at officials this season. Referees would like the FA to echo Uefa punishments, so guilty managers receive touchline bans that prevent them having contact with players on match-day.

The David Moyes thing is beyond the remit of this blog (but he did have a point didn't he? and he was polite enough after the game and he's right in saying that referees need to earn respect) but Sir Alex didn't "rail at officials", far from it.  His comments completely supported Mark Halsey, didn't they:

"My information is that Hackett told Mark Halsey to rescind the red card and he would not do it," said Ferguson. "Now I understand that Halsey is being made to referee in League Two this weekend. I just don't understand how this could have happened. If it had been a Manchester United player, Hackett would never have done this for us."

Sounds pretty supportive of Halsey to me.  He had a go at Hackett who is "the general manager of the Professional Game Match Officials Board" which, to my mind, is not "an official".
This, from The Independent, sums up the comments from after Wednesday's game about that game and about the Chelsea game and looks at possible selection issues:

The selection decision may depend on the fitness of Dimitar Berbatov, who injured a knee at Anfield. However, the Berbatov-Wayne Rooney-Carlos Tevez combination looked unbalanced at Anfield, with the Bulgarian isolated and the other two lost in wide positions

The Times quotes at length from Darren Fletcher, fairly standard stuff:

“Sunday is a massive game after losing to Liverpool,” Fletcher said. “It is
important we don't lose too much ground in the Premiership. It has to happen
soon or we will have a massive task. We are going to be so many points
behind, you would reach the stage where you cannot afford to lose any games.
You don't want that this early because the Premier League is a tough league.
We have to get back on track against Chelsea. There is no bigger game to do
that.”

And finally The Guardian continues yesterdays theme of overstressing our average start to the season.  I wouldn't even bother reading it.

Never as tired as when I'm waking up

Predictably all the reports on last night's game are pretty negative.  Yes it was disappointing we didn't get the win we deserved (The Mail kindly allows that we "would just about have deserved" the win), but it was certainly an improvement over Saturday and if the rub of the green (or penalty decisions) had gone our way we would have won comfortably.  And Ronaldo back and looking pretty sharp considering he's back from injury:  the pass from midfield through to Rooney was vintage and his crossing was pinpoint.  This report on The Guardian blog suggests the crowds reaction to Ronaldo was borne of necessity rather than true love and I quote this passage without comment (except to make bold the offending word which shows up bias:

Sir Alex Ferguson seemed to regard it as a sort of reaffirmation. "The
crowd's reaction was important to Cristiano," explained United's
manager. "I think he now realises what a great club he's at and how
well the fans support him. He will take great encouragement from that."

The Guardian's match report is very downbeat, this sums up the general tone:

It was quite a party in Moscow 119 days ago and the suspicion lingers
that Manchester United are still struggling to get over the hangover.
It is now two victories from six matches for Sir Alex Ferguson's side,
after Villarreal made sure that the Champions League holders endured a
frustrating start to their defence of the trophy that was lifted in
such dramatic fashion in May.

Must be why we've more points in the league at this stage this season than last - the hangover?!  The Times continues the misguided theme in their report:

The previous five teams to defend the Champions League trophy have not fared
well in the attempt and last night Manchester United discovered why. The
monumental effort of winning the thing, coupled with defending it and
maintaining an assault on the domestic title, is gruelling beyond belief,
even for a collective of the world’s finest players.

Do all these journalists just copy each other?

The War Against Intelligence

Sir Alex tells it like it is after Terry wins his appeal.  This report from The Independent is about the best:

Sir Alex Ferguson yesterday accused the Premier League's head of referees
Keith Hackett of favouring Chelsea after John Terry's red card was
controversially rescinded to make the defender eligible for the league match
against Manchester United on Sunday. Mark Halsey, the referee who awarded
the card, has been banished to League Two as punishment.

Ferguson has a history of enmity with Hackett and accused him of pressurising
Halsey into the decision – eventually the red card was overturned by a
Football Association independent commission. "My information is that
Hackett told Mark Halsey to rescind the red card and he would not do it,"
said Ferguson. "Now I understand that Halsey is being made to referee
in League Two this weekend. I just don't understand how this could have
happened. If it had been a Manchester United player, Hackett would never
have done this for us."

Of course the organization that Hackett is head of denied this version of events, surprisingly, although Halsey has been demoted and that is Hackett's decision so far as I'm aware.  The Independent goes on to give some facts about Chelsea:

Chelsea's record in appealing against red cards is more prolific than any
other club in the Premier League. Last season they appealed against red
cards for John Obi Mikel, Michael Essien, Ashley Cole and Lampard. On top of that
they also appealed a red card given to Wayne Bridge in a reserve game
against Fulham last October. All but the Lampard dismissal were upheld by
the FA. There were only five other appeals in the whole league, plus one
from Tottenham for a red card to Didier Zokora in the Carling Cup.

Playing the percentages is clearly working for Chelsea and the decision to
overturn Terry's ban will be difficult for Ferguson to accept given that
Nemanja Vidic's dismissal against Liverpool for two yellows was debatable at
best. Only straight red cards can be appealed.

This article by Rob Hughes in The International Herald Tribune is pretty good on the Terry tackle:

Terry's foul was reckless rather than dangerous. He was beaten for
pace and skill, but Chelsea was ahead 3-1, and there were possibly two
defenders who could have caught Jo before he could score.

If Terry was aware of all this, why did he kick out at Jo as the
Brazilian passed him? Why did he then grapple at Jo from behind,
dragging him to the turf with an arm around his waist?

Why, why, why did five Chelsea players - Frank Lampard, Ashley Cole,
Deco, Ricardo Carvalho and Nicolas Anelka - join Terry in confronting
the referee, Mark Halsey?

The professionals have been asked this season to observe more respect for the match officials.

The FA has especially tried to prevent Chelsea, Manchester United
and Arsenal from having their players surround the referees like
back-street mobs. Chelsea came perilously close to breaching that code.

...

This ref got it right. Authority failed to back him.

Ronaldo is likely to be back tonight and this from the Guardian has Sir Alex's comments on that as well as some more comments on the Liverpool game and tonight's game:

"Everyone knows he said that he'd like to go to Real Madrid. But when I
had a meeting with him about it, that was it finished. He understood my
position and the club's position and he's got on with it. He's accepted
it, been professional and there hasn't been one problem since. There's
been no pettiness, no throwing toys out of the pram. His training has
been absolutely fantastic. He's probably been one of the best patients
I've ever seen. Every day, until 5pm, he's shown a real determination
[to get fit], which is a credit to him and the physios. They [the
physios] have done a great job but he's been a fantastic patient."

Human After All

It has to be said that we were rubbish yesterday.  Liverpool weren't very good, but they still beat us.  Disappointing. Sir Alex commented pretty fairly (from The Guardian):

'We gave away two bad goals and you don't expect that from Manchester
United,' Ferguson said. 'The defending was poor for both goals. When
people watch us on television, they will think it was some Conference
team defending. It was shocking stuff.'

The same could be said of Liverpool though: it wasn't a victory borne of skill, all their attacking play was pretty ordinary, and that makes it worse really, we should have defended better, we shouldn't have let them dominate, although what Sir Alex says of the referee should also be taken into account:

Magnanimous though he may have been in defeat, Ferguson could not
resist a complaint about the quality of Howard Webb's officiating. 'He
led with his elbow,' Ferguson said of Vidic's late challenge on Xabi
Alonso. 'But defenders do it all the time. [Jamie] Carragher leads with
his elbow, but he never gets a free-kick given against him. We're not a
dirty side, but we've had three bookings and a sending-off. That's the
disadvantage when you're not at home.'

What does surprise me is the way the papers refuse to criticise Ryan Giggs for the second goal.  I've mentioned before how Ryan Giggs is the Man Utd player even the haters like but to ignore his role in their second goal as The Mail does (all the papers downplay it (The Telegraph has "scorning efforts to shield it", whose efforts?) but The Mail downright ignore it) is ridiculous:

Riera made way for Babel and six minutes later, Mascherano surged for
the byline where, for some reason, the normally robust Vidic
pussy-footed into a challenge and allowed the ball to run through to
Kuyt.

And Ryan Giggs was nowhere to be seen...

The Independent has a Champions League preview:

"Villarreal are a very difficult team to beat. They've had the same
very good coach [Manuel Pellegrini] for five years now, never out of
Europe since he went there. It'll be a hard game." [Sir Alex]

Buy The Moon of Jupiter

The big match previews concentrate, as expected, on Berbatov, but also on Benitez getting flustered.
Daniel Taylor in The Guardian looks forward Berbatov's role in today's game, but also to when Ronaldo is fit again:

The real business starts today when Berbatov is thrown into the bearpit
that is Anfield whenever Manchester United are in town. How Ferguson
plans to accommodate him in the same team as Wayne Rooney and Carlos
Tevez remains to be seen and, in a few weeks, the United manager will
also have to devise a way to shoehorn Cristiano Ronaldo into the side
as well. But if there is one Ferguson quality that should never be
overlooked, it is his bold instinct and sense for the dramatic.

And he quotes Sir Alex on what Berbatov brings to the team:

"If you look at our other strikers, they are all very young," says
Ferguson. "Carlos is the oldest, but he's only 23. So Dimitar gives us
extra experience and composure."

James Ducker in The Times reports on a Sir Alex relaxed before the game:
It has been a common tactic of Sir Alex Ferguson's to engage in
psychological warfare before tussles with his foremost managerial
rivals, but maybe it is a result of the confidence that comes with
having such a superior record over Liverpool in the league of late that
the Manchester United manager cut such a diplomatic figure before
today's match at Anfield.
While Rafael Benítez was busy laying into Ferguson over his perceived
comments about Robbie Keane, the United manager resisted the temptation
to direct barbs in Liverpool's direction

With Jamie Carragher denouncing Liverpool's American owners, Tom
Hicks and George Gillett Jr, another protest against whom will be
staged before kick-off, Ferguson was not short of ammunition, but
instead the United manager resisted. Dare one say it, he was even nice.
Maybe Liverpool fans should start to worry.

“Is the fans' protest against me,” Ferguson joked. It summed up his mood. Relaxed, convivial, not a care in the world.

Unlike Benitez.  Andy Hunter in The Guardian reports that:

Ferguson's suggestion that Liverpool paid over the odds for the
Republic of Ireland captain this summer - "a surprise" was the United
manager's description - drew Benítez into a rare spat with his Old
Trafford counterpart on the eve of their latest emotive confrontation
at Anfield.

The Liverpool manager has long believed Ferguson's spending record is
overlooked compared to his own; likewise his rotation policy.

How insane is that last sentence?  Perhaps it's been "overlooked" because we actually and consistently win things (and I'm not just talking about Carling Cups... or the flukiest Champions League in history...).  And I can't be bothered to check out the facts and figures but Liverpool must consistently outspend us, and the amount of rubbish Benitez buys, well... Benitez is quoted as saying "We cannot spend £60m on two strikers like United", no? s that because you've spent so much on another load of useless midfielders?

Kill the Poor

What with the international break the best (only) story I could find today (or yesterday, hence lack of post, rather than my usual laziness...) is this typical Daily Mail story on Berbatov:

He may have just signed a £30.75million deal with Manchester United, but Dimitar Berbatov doesn't have a penny to spare.

The 27-year-old declined to buy a copy of the Big Issue last night after enjoying a plush dinner at Manchester's San Carlo restaurant.

The former Spurs striker told a homeless vendor he was 'skint', according to onlookers.

Genius story, it goes on to say he got some change off a friend and bought a copy, so he presumably meant that he hadn't any cash on him, but still.  Guess we can file this in the rich footballers are rubbish file, rather than the biased against Man Utd file...

Cash Still Rules

Ronaldo might be back to play some part against Chelsea according to a report in The Daily Star:

“He may have missed pre-season but he is looking good,” said a United insider.


“It was thought Cristiano would be out until October but he has worked
hard and is ahead of schedule.


“The last week has seen a real surge in the amount of work he has been
doing and there have been no problems so far.

“He has surprised everyone, including himself.


“Hopes are really high around Carrington that he can play some part at
Chelsea, even if it is off the bench.”

The "insider" goes on to detail the response to Man City's statement about buying Ronaldo for £135m, '“That raised a real smile,” the sourceadded. “Everyone was laughing and
joking about it. I don’t think he will be going there, somehow.”' The Sunday Times reports on David Gill's reponse to the Man City/Ronaldo thing:

he had taken the reports "with a pinch of
salt".

"I have never met the gentleman. That is a fantastic amount of money and
would turn the industry upside down so I can't believe he is serious at
those sorts of levels.

"Ultimately we would discuss any offer with Alex and the owners, as that
sort of money is very large for one person.

"But we are not in the market to sell our best players."

Into The Blue

Just 2 rather silly stories today, The Guardian reports on an Andorra player calling Wayne Rooney arrogant:

Asked if Rooney swore at him, he said: "Yes, Rooney did. We were
talking and he said 'I'm a star player' and insulted me. So I insulted
him. In his mind he was thinking: 'Who are Andorra? They have small
players and are not professional.'

"Rooney was arrogant. The
match was a very hot situation and, when Rooney talks, he's very
aggressive. It was a battle. There was a moment when the game was on
the other side of the pitch and he just pushed me."

If I remember this game correctly, there was an attitude problem for the whole of the England team, not just Rooney, so to single him out seems a trifle petty, just following their usual agenda I guess.

The other story is a typical Daily Mail thing, Ronaldo has just bought a new car, and it's blue, brilliant:

The mega-rich owners of Manchester City have put him top of their shopping list - and they will be encouraged by Cristiano Ronaldo's latest purchase.

For the United
winger, who was linked with a move to Real Madrid in the summer, has
ditched his allegiance to the Red Devils and bought a new £340,000
Bentley coupe - in City blue.

(sigh)

A manu[cho]al Dexterity

Not much around today. Main story is the news of Mike Phelan being made up to assistant manager, from The Guardian:

"Mick knows Manchester United inside out, having been associated with the club for the best part of 20 years," said Ferguson. "He is a very talented and professional coach, whose ability and contribution to the club's success has often been understated."

The same paper hides the news that Manucho has finally got his work permit in the same story, although, oddly, it would appear that there was a bit of a mix up:

David Gill, United's chief executive, explained: "We couldn't get a work permit for him straight away but when we looked at the rules and regulations we found that he actually qualified for one automatically. We're delighted to have him. You only need to look at the goals he scored at the African Nations Cup to see that and I think he brings something different to the team. He's a great prospect."

Giles Smith In The Times has a piece on Sky Sports News' coverage of transfer deadline day which, although it isn't specifically about Man Utd, since I enjoyed watching it myself I'll link to.

General Principles

Is back.

We finally sign Berbatov. I was out last night and following Sky Sports News from pub to pub made compelling viewing - they should close the transfer window more often...
Anyway, in The Telegraph the ridiculous Henry Winter speaks far too soon on the deal - he should really have slowed down and waited till he had a piece that actually made sense:

For those United fans gathered outside the Theatre of Dreams, it was a magical scene. For neutrals who feel there are other more principled ways of conducting business with an opponent’s star player, the scene stirred only unease. While everyone catches their breath this morning, and reflects on a mad, money-filled night, the Premier League must inspect United’s conduct regarding Berbatov.

Everyone in the whole world knew that Berbatov was going to come to Man Utd. Everyone, including Henry Winter. Why the fake outrage when he actually turns up? Why not some outrage at Manchester City, trying to hijack a player who everyone knew only wanted to join us, wanted Champions League football, wanted to play at and with the best. Was there any point, other than raising his price, for Manchester City to get involved? Talk principles to them.