To Live for My Death

The problem with doing a paper round up every day is that if the papers are rubbish I still have to read all the stories about us. Frankly, I preferred the summer lull and silly transfer rumours to the way the papers have been reporting the first games of the season. It's like every day I have to read exactly the same story over and over again and then try and find the energy to quote from them, and slag them off, try and find new and fresh ways to slag off the same old story, to say, "yes we'll miss Ronaldo, but he's only one player and let's concentrate on what we have got, we could buy someone else, but they wouldn't be Ronaldo," or "Berbatov is better than you constantly bang on about," or "it's still too early to judge Owen." I can't believe people want to read the same old rubbish (and I refer to the papers, obviously, not my own humble efforts...), everyday. If I didn't do this paper round-up I would look at the headlines of the stories about us and I really wouldn't bother reading them, "what, another story about us missing Ronaldo? Really? I must click on that, can't wait to see what this writer thinks it is precisely about Ronaldo that we'll miss..." "Lazy Berba? OMG, I must read that, that is such an original criticism, can't wait to find out what his justification for it is..." Do people not want originality? Do the editors see something in their sales figures that tells them that if they just write the same old shit everyday they'll get more readers... Stumbles upon the truth... these stories aren't aimed at Man Utd fans, they're aimed at the rest of the population, at the people who hate us, the people who do want to read bad shit about us everyday, who want to be reassured that we're rubbish everyday, negativity is the way to sell papers when it comes to us.

Screw them...

All of which preamble is to say that the papers aren't worth reading. Stop now. I'll read the shite so you don't have to.
I'll quote the opening from Daniel Taylor in The Guardian and ignore the rest of it:

The thing about Manchester United, to regurgitate an old quote from Roy Keane, is that this is a club where "a one-game losing run is a crisis". That is the mindset when a team of serial winners is put together and Keane summed it up in his inimitable style when he reminisced about the United team he joined in 1993: "If you lost, nobody would speak to each other on Monday morning. Doom and gloom on the training ground, people kicking each other, rows bursting out, the manager effing and blinding, tension building up until you had the chance to go out and put it right."

One story that is very popular in the papers today is that famous sports commentator and witty raconteur Frank bleeding Lampard giving his opinion on Ronaldo. Very insightful. He actually holds the outlandish but revealing opinion that if Ronaldo had taken the penalty against Burnley he "would probably have scored it." Thanks go to ...every fucking paper in the land for printing that.
Sam Wallace in The Independent wonders who on earth we could buy.
There's one interesting sentence in an otherwise rubbish Times article. Rubbish because the writer does the dishonest trick of putting "the Ronaldo question" into other's mouths - "it is clear that every time his forwards fail to fire, fresh questions will be raised over his decision-making in the aftermath of Cristiano Ronaldo’s sale to Real Madrid." - before whining on in answer to the question. The one interesting sentence:

The chances that fell Owen’s way in the narrow defeat against Burnley and the equally slender opening-day victory over Birmingham City prove two things: first, that creativity is not a big problem for the champions even if their output of one goal in two games against two promoted teams suggests otherwise; second, that Owen is finding his way through opposition defences without looking sharp enough yet to punish them.

Mark Ogden is rubbish in The Telegraph on Owen.
Brian Jensen (Burnley's keeper) usefully points out that Ronaldo used to take our penalties (I wonder in passing whether the Burnley game could have been one that Sir Alex had rested Ronaldo in, presuming we'd have had enough without him...) in The Sun.
Steven Howard has a wonderful piece (heavy use of sarcasm) in which he tells us that he'd told us all about the problems we'd have. What a genius this guy is. I mean really, no one else was writing about missing Ronaldo or the risk of signing Owen ALL FUCKING SUMMER where they Steven Howard? Jesus wept.
Finally, if you've made it this far, something vaguely useful, Evra on attacking more this season, from The Manchester Evening News:
"I have been getting forward a little more," said the former Monaco star.

"We always like to play with attacking full-backs but maybe this season we will see more of the left and right backs in the final third.

"When you had Ronaldo in front of you, sometimes it was just tempting to give him the ball because you knew he could make something happen.

"We would overlap at times but usually he could manage on his own.

"Maybe we will attack using more players - more like a team - this season."

And that, thank Christ, is that. Please give me something new to write about tomorrow...