We Like The Cars

Top story of the day, courtesy of The Mirror - Michael Owen buys a car:

Striker Michael Owen has celebrated his move to Manchester United by splashing out £170,000 on the latest Ferrari supercar.

A United insider said: "Michael ordered the new California, which is being fitted to his specification.

"It is a different shape to his old Ferrari and although it is not as expensive it is equally impressive.

"He wanted a car to celebrate his move. I think he wanted to treat himself."

Thank god the new season is almost upon us...
Speaking of which, there's a couple of season previews about today. The Guardian looks at the 5 clubs likely to be challenging and how pre-season has gone. Here's some of what they say about us:

Without Cristiano Ronaldo, United occasionally lacked a bit of star quality on a tour to the Far East and Germany, particularly when the standard rose in the Audi Cup in Munich. The mantra is that United will be "difficult to beat" and they retain a formidable first-choice defence, not least in the centre, with Rio Ferdinand and Nemanja Vidic. Michael Owen showed with four goals in four games on the Asian tour that he is less of a gamble than some imagine and the most expensive summer signing, Antonio Valencia, made a positive impression with a goal on his debut, against Boca Juniors. Covering the loss of Ronaldo's goals and assists will be key.

I'm not sure whether the "difficult to beat" thing is intentionally meant to make us sound like Bolton, but I am sure that concentrating on that and Owen doesn't really sum up some of the great football (and I'll include moments of the second half against Bayern where we looked penetrative against their defence) we played pre-season.
The Manchester Evening News has a few of the new transfer rumours mixed into an article on how we're shaping up for the new season:

Fergie will not spend for the sake of it but he knows that with the departures of Ronaldo and Tevez, so too went a certain amount of sparkle. If Ronaldo was the chief inspiration for United's most recent title success, it was the depth of Ferguson's squad that fired dreams of an audacious quintuple.

Ronaldo, Wayne Rooney, Michael Carrick, Paul Scholes, Rio Ferdinand, Wes Brown, Owen Hargreaves and Gary Neville all spent extended periods on the sidelines last term - but it had little impact on results.

And even with the loss of Ronaldo and Tevez this summer, he still boasts a daunting squad, albeit a little less sparkly. Ferguson is still to formulate the best way to cope without the loss of Ronaldo - hinting at a more compact system and maybe a reversion to an orthodox 4-4-2.

If United's pre-season schedule - which concludes this week with the visit of Valencia on Wednesday and the Community Shield on Sunday - has told us anything, it is that Ferguson is still undecided as to which side will kick off United's attempt to make it four successive titles.

All in all it's not bad a bad article as an optimistic round-up.
The Times has Oliver Kay on Owen and England, an article which I'm not going to quote from, it being about England more than United.
Finally The Mail has this article on Silva to United rumour, but all the way through it refers to him as Villa (maybe they'll realise and change it at some point today - right now this is what it says):

are set to approach Valencia for Spain international David Villa.

The title of the article mentions Silva. The final paragraph, after mentioning Villa throughout the article, has this:

rumours persist about the future of Silva's team-mate at the Mestalla, David Villa.

Just goes to show how interchangeable the names in these made-up rumours are...