Sir Alex defended Ben Foster at the press conference yesterday. I'll be looking at this more in the Stoke match preview coming later so I'll just put the bare quotes in here:
"There's no need to change," Ferguson said. "He [Foster] is showing great qualities. We are not worrying about the odd mistake – young players make them all the time – and, as I have said before, he has not had a great deal of game experience. But he will be OK. No, I've not got a problem with the boy." ...
Foster's confidence seems to have been badly affected going into a potentially tricky match at Stoke City, but when it was put to Ferguson that the goalkeeper's communication with the back four had been poor against City, he made it clear that he did not want to discuss the matter in detail.
"I'm not getting into the City game, I'm not talking about that at all. I've answered the question, he's playing. I'm not worried about it. We thought it was a good opportunity for Tomasz to play on Wednesday, as we did with a lot of the players. But Ben will play [at Stoke]."
"He has always made that decision around the end of December and it will be the same this season. The fact is he's out injured at the moment, we have more of a concern about him getting back rather than what will happen the following year. But he's 39 years of age. There's going to be a time when Edwin decides it's time for him."Sir Alex on Ryan Giggs:
"I don't know what else there is to say about Ryan," said Fergie. "There's no discernible deterioration in his game.
"It's remarkable and a lot of it's to do with his physique, how he lives his life and how he prepares for games.
"When someone like Ryan is playing at the level he's been playing at, he realises that to stay there he has to prepare himself the right way and look after himself."
James Ducker has an article in The Times worth reading, praising Giggs, just quote the start:
The official reason given for Micah Richards’s absence for Manchester City’s Carling Cup third-round tie against Fulham on Wednesday evening was a shoulder injury.
The suspicion, though, was that the young England defender was still so traumatised by the licking he had been given by Ryan Giggs in the Manchester derby three days earlier that Mark Hughes, the City manager, had taken pity on his player and removed him from the line of fire.
Being given the run-around by someone 14 years your senior would ordinarily be a rather embarrassing affair, but when your tormentor is the Benjamin Button of the Barclays Premier League, it can easily be forgiven.
'I feel it will still take us four weeks to get him into the rhythm of training again and get to the point of match play,' said Ferguson.
'Normally, when a player has been out for that length of time he is helped by the fact he is doing his rehabilitation with other players.
'Because he did it on his own in the USA, under the guidance of Dr Richard Steadman, it is not easy.
'But he has the determination and resilience to see it through. He is now back with us and hopefully the boy gets a break and continues his progress without any further mishaps.'
There's quite a big interview with Rooney in The Sun, mainly on his Street Striker TV show - a snippet:
"I go back home to see my old mates whenever I get the time and we still have a kickabout like we did as kids.
"Obviously that's got harder in terms of getting time to do it. But when I'm back, if someone's got a ball, we'll just be in the street booting it around and messing about.
"We don't have a proper game or anything, we're just trying to hit a lamp-post from across the road or something like that - very similar to some things in the show to be honest. And no, I don't always win. They'll beat me from time to time and let me know about it! Some of the challenges in the show are very similar to those kick-abouts back home and I've been amazed by the quality of the kids this year."
It took almost a week, but finally something sensible about the Man City/timekeeping thing on The Guardian blog:
Anyone who seriously believes that at Old Trafford Martin Atkinson checked his watch after 94 minutes and thought he had better add on another two to keep Fergie happy ought to go and lie down in a darkened room. The reality is that even as the match went into stoppage time Atkinson was adding at least another 30 seconds for the celebrations which followed Craig Bellamy's equaliser and then added 30 or so more for United replacing Anderson with Michael Carrick. Such calculations are inexact anyway. This is not ice hockey, where puck and clock start and stop in unison.
So at home Manchester United are apt to get a few more seconds when they are looking for a winner or, more rarely, an equaliser. There is surely a logical explanation for this. Think about it. In these circumstances United will invariably force a succession of corners and the odd free-kick. As a rule referees allow a set piece to go ahead before ending a match.
The Mail's obsession with the Pogba/youth players thing gets a bit of a dampener today:
'We have 15 investigations in England and we know already that these investigations are not at the same level as the Chelsea one.
'Everyone is coming with lawyers, and then it takes years, at least months, to finalise cases.'
A generally sensible opinion piece by Des Kelly on player wages, though slightly ruined by taking Gary Neville's words on the subject in slightly the wrong spirit:
And remember the radio phone-in fuss when Johnny Depp collected £22million, the biggest payday in Hollywood acting history, to star in the fourth Pirates Of The Caribbean film? No, me neither. But if Cristiano Ronaldo buys a new car, the sky falls in.
Look through a list of Britain’s 100 richest people and you won’t find any footballer’s name. There’ll be Lords, Sheiks, perhaps a porn baron or two. You’ll see the people who own the clubs and milk more money out of them, but none of the men the industry actually revolves around. So I don’t begrudge them what they earn.
It’s the sense of entitlement that players stuff into their wallets that grates most of all.
Big wages do not have to be accompanied by arrogance. The ‘because I’m worth it’ attitude translates into an overblown conceit, as everyone around them makes excuses for their transgressions and feeds them the idea they have a ‘Get Out Of Jail Free’ card for whatever they do.
I’m not landing all football’s ills at Neville’s door. On any occasion I’ve met the man, he has been bright, committed and well able to argue his corner. In fact, I happen to think he regards himself very fortunate to be where he is and is precisely the type of character who would play for nothing if he had to. I just wish he’d say it out loud and often.
Finally, the ever reliable (for writing nonsense) James Lawton weighs in on the subject that's on everyone's lips ... 1960's football ... Yes, he puts his rose tinted specs on to tell us how great football used to be. The way he does it though is priceless, first off he suggests that all the football games on MOTD are rubbish and then tells us how great it used be, back then. How's he illustrate this? By citing one single game of football:
What has been lost, of course, is the idea of a proper league, one which has a little depth, a degree of competitive range. Inevitably, the concept of such a league is consumed by the years which have seen the domination of United, Chelsea and Arsenal to the point where any revisiting of the past is like wandering into a cave full of abandoned treasure.
For example, we might take in one of those few occasions when Stoke, even though they had a team of quite dazzling individual ability, made a rare appearance on Match of the Day for the trip to Spurs: 27 November 1965, when England were shaping their only successful challenge for the World Cup, when every member of the old First Division had creative powers that would illuminate so many of the high-speed fringe engagements of the Premier League, will do well enough.
The game was of remarkable quality despite the appalling playing surface.
And he drivels on in this vein for far too long. WTF? Can I choose a game from a MOTD of this year to illustrate how amazing football is now? I could, but it would be freaking pointless... A bit like James Lawton - to paraphrase the film Dazed and Confused, "If I ever start talking about the football of my youth as the best of my life, please shoot me..."
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