Tricky Kid

While I often criticise The Daily Mirror, today it wins the award for most extensive match report of our pre-season friendly.  Most of the others use the PA story, for instance The Independent here, but The Mirror have an actual report from David McDonnell, who cites Kagawa as the star man:

Sir Alex Ferguson hailed Shinji Kagawa as his first Manchester United goal saw them wrap up the first part of their pre-season tour with a win.

Kagawa was United's most influential player and served notice of the impact he can have at United following his £17million move from German champions Borussia Dortmund.

"Kagawa was man of the match and I thought he deserved that," said Ferguson.

"He has settled in really well and is going to be a really good player for us. I was really impressed with him tonight.

"One of the features of our game over the years now has been the speed of our counter-attacking. Antonio Valencia is good at that, but Kagawa adds to that.

"But more than that, I think his awareness of receiving the ball and speed of turning defenders, I think that's going to be an asset for us."

The Japan international, playing in the hole just off lone striker Federico Macheda, scored a deserved goal in the 68th minute.

The Sun use a slightly rewritten version of the PA story, rewritten primarily so as to include "tricky ace" as a description of  Kagawa.

The Moura story is still news with the usual suspects,  The Mail and The Mirror both reporting comments made by the Sao Paulo president, comments which are fairly meaningless beyond their over-politeness:

"I don't rule out the possibility that in the future there are some sort of negotiations, because we received Manchester [United] with great courtesy and left open the possibility of more talks.

"Manchester [United] came to us and their approach was serious. Other teams expressed an interest for Lucas, but only through the media in their countries."

Lopes did warn, though, that Lucas, who is currently in England with the Brazil Olympic squad, is happy to remain at home-town club Sao Paulo.

"The player has expressed his intention to remain at Sao Paulo, and is a very important player in our squad. He wants to stay because he is very young," he added.

The only other story is on the Glazers apparently postponing the stock flotation, from The Guardian:

Manchester United are thought to have postponed temporarily plans to launch their $300m (£193m) flotation in New York, after volatile US markets spooked the Premier League club into a rethink.

The move is the latest setback in a long-running attempt to list the company's shares, a move that had previously been earmarked for the exchanges in Hong Kong and Singapore, and comes as the club had been looking to kick off their roadshow presentations to potential share buyers this week.

However, United and their advisers are now believed to be reassessing that plan following another week of turmoil in the eurozone that has caused world stock markets to slide. Wall Street's S&P 500 index is trading down 2% this week, while keenly watched statistics on the volatility of the market are thought to have made potential investors more circumspect.

The plan had been for United's shares to begin trading in early August and it is not clear if United will still attempt to list their shares ahead of the traditionally quiet period up until after the US public holidays in early September, when Wall Street tends to return to work.

Neither Jefferies, the investment bank that has been signed up to lead United's flotation, nor the club returned phone calls on the flotation delay, reported on Wednesday night in the Financial Times.