Fight Song

A bit of transfer gossip around today, plus Wayne Rooney in the news for not-football again *sigh*

Let's get Rooney out the way first.  On Twitter someone tweeted him this:

"Rooney ya fat whore ill smash ya head in with a pitchin wedge an bury ya with a ballast fork ya fat ugly lil nonce."

At which point Rooney replied, ""I will put u asleep within 10 seconds hope u turn up if u don't gonna tell everyone ur scared u little nit. I'll be waiting. Don't say stuff and not follow up on it. I'll be waiting."

Is this newsworthy?  Rooney's twitter is actually pretty good, comes across as really personable, doesn't go in for Rio Ferdinand type Twitter shenanigans, doesn't seem to obsessed with Piers Morgan.  So why does one bit of annoyance at a tosser get in the news.  Most of the papers report it.  I won't link to it, the story's above, that really is it.  At least the faux-outrage only goes up to one - though I'm sure there'll be opinion pieces for days with this one...

Onto the transfer stuff.  3 targets according to David Gill and Sir Alex at the Player's award ceremony yesterday.  Here's Gill:

'It probably will be slightly busier than normal,' Gill told MUTV during the annual Manchester United players' awards ceremony at Old Trafford.

'Gary has retired already. Edwin is retiring and Paul has to decide what he wants to do. 'We have been working very hard over the course of the last 12 months to plan which positions we need to fill, identifying those players and trying to work on it.

'What Alex Ferguson has done very successfully for nearly 25 years is to reinvent the team slowly and integrate them within the established stars. That is what we will continue to do.

'It gives a buzz to everyone at the club when you bring in high quality players. It is something we look forward to with relish.'

And Sir Alex confirms the three figure while praising the youngsters coming through:

'We have some ideas in mind,' said the United boss. 'Hopefully we can get them put in place.

'We have Ryan Giggs and Paul Scholes coming towards the end of their careers, Gary Neville has already retired and Edwin van der Sar is retiring, so there are holes we want to plug up in terms of the safety and security of the team for the next few years.

'Of course, we have some excellent young players and a lot of them have progressed, which gives us a great, powerful squad.'

One player we're apparently on the verge of signing is  Raphaël Varane from Lens who can play as a

defensive central midfielder but it is his performances as a centre-half that have brought him to the attention of Ferguson at a time when Rio Ferdinand can no longer be guaranteed to play a full season and Wes Brown is out of contract next summer and contemplating ending his long association with the club. 

According to the report we're trying to get the price down and the player himself has concerns which seem to have been addressed:

The player's concern about moving to Manchester is that he will not get many first-team opportunities, but the early feedback from Old Trafford is that Ferguson wants him to get to know the English game.

Lastly, a couple of pieces of nonsense - James Lawton rambles on about whether Scholes should retire. I admit to not reading it all, it's very dull.  And the Wolves Chairman thinks we should be fined if we play a "weakened team" against Blackpool:

“It would be pretty hypocritical if they weren’t fined,’’ said Morgan, although he stressed his admiration for United. “United put out a second string XI against Schalke and it didn’t do Schalke much good.”

"United are a very professional club and they’re not going to want to lose on the last day of the season, the day they get presented with the Premier League trophy. They might put their full XI out. Chances are they probably won’t.”

Which is a slightly more muddled statement than the headline suggest...