Final Goodbye

Seeing as my usual paper round has been, on the whole, overtaken by events, I'll do this extra post on those events.
Here's the statement released by Manchester United:

Manchester United have received a world-record, unconditional offer of £80million for Cristiano Ronaldo from Real Madrid.

At Cristiano's request - who has again expressed his desire to leave - and after discussion with the player's representatives, United have agreed to give Real Madrid permission to talk to the player.

Matters are expected to be concluded by 30 June. The club will not comment until further notice.

It is this sentence, that Ronaldo, "has again expressed his desire to leave", which is likely to cause some unnecessary criticism of him. Accusations of disloyalty are already flying around. Accusations which are completely unfounded as far as I'm concerned. If he had been really disloyal wouldn't he have simply dug his heels in last year? He waited, gave us another brilliant season and, as he is leaving, is filling our coffers with £80 million. Where's the disloyalty?
I said last year when the whole saga originally started this:

he wants to move if Real are willing to Man Utd a good price ... I'm not denying that Ronaldo wants more money for himself - is that so wrong, he knows his worth and wants it recognised in his pocket - but, to me, the important fact is that, despite the fact that he seems to want to move on, he is not wanting to move at any cost. He still has loyalty to his club.

And further along the line, I said this:

After the season Ronaldo had would it not have been a good time for him (from a personal perspective) to move on - he's proved himself in England - now to test himself elsewhere?

And what's changed? We've had years of great service from him and we're getting an amazing price for him on leaving? And on the other point - how many times this season have we read, "well, he's not as good as last season is he?" Last season would have been a great time for him to leave personally. But he gave us another year, helped us win another League title, almost helped us win The Champions League again (and was one of our best players in the Final).
So let's thank him for the service he's given, the magic moments, and wish him luck - because he's probably going to need it...