Expensive Pens

Busy morning, what with a friendly and lots of transfer business to crack on with.

Let's start with the friendly, although The Sun link our 0-0 with Barca with the signing of van Persie:

MANCHESTER UNITED drew a blank again to show how much they desperately need Arsenal goal-king Robin van Persie.

Alex Ferguson looked on as his team fluffed THREE penalties against Spanish giants Barcelona in their friendly in Sweden.

Wayne Rooney missed in normal time while Nani and Ashley Young failed in a shootout — giving their boss plenty to think about.

His players have scored just three goals in five pre-season matches — so maybe they do need to break the bank to sign RVP this month.

 The Daily Star do the same, looking at Rooney's "penalty woes":

United blew a golden chance to beat great rivals Barcelona as Wayne Rooney’s spot-kick hell continued in Gothenburg.

The England striker missed four penalties last season and he was at it again last night as his effort was saved on the stroke of half time.

Although they claim our penalty award was harsh, despite it being the stupid challenge in history, diving in in the box, never advisable.

The Mirror report is rubbish.

Onto the post-match and Sir Alex's comments on the possibility of signing Robin van Persie are what's making the headlines.  Here he is, from The Sun:

The United boss says the Gunners are keeping him in the dark after he made a bid for the Dutch striker.

Fergie said: “It’s difficult to know why they are operating in this way. We’ve been trying our best but there’s been no progress.

“You know we’ve made a bid but Arsenal have been trying to negotiate with other clubs.

"They are not giving anything away. I’ve not got a gut feeling about this one. We have not had any breakthrough.”

Not sure it's any great surprise that Arsenal might not be too keen on selling him to us, or any Premier League rival really.

Sir Alex's comments make this piece in The Telegraph slightly irrelevant - it says we're offering RvP the same money as Rooney's getting.

The Mirror make some stuff up about it all:

Sir Alex Ferguson has been warned it will take an “unbelievable” offer to persuade Arsenal to sell Robin van Persie to him.

Gunners manager Arsene Wenger will not sell for less than £20m - and will demand a premium fee of more than £25m from Fergie and Manchester United because Arsenal do not want to do business with a direct Premier League rival.

The other transfer saga, that of Moura, comes to a conclusion today:  he's off to PSG, for lots of cash. And Sir Alex isn't impressed:

"I find it quite amazing that a club can pay €45m for a 19-year-old boy," said Ferguson. "To tell everyone that PSG are here they've signed Thiago Silva and Zlatan Ibrahimovic. They must have spent about £150m in the last month.

"The only deterrent to that is UEFA. In the conditions of European football, you don't qualify for Europe by winning the league or coming second – you only get in by invitation. That's where, hopefully, UEFA can have some power. "

 Although given we were (allegedly) willing to pay about €38 it's probably just sour grapes.

One final story: despite all the scepticism, it would seem that the Glazers share flotation is going to be a success:

A successful float would see United worth around $3bn (£1.92bn), about twice the value of Spain's Real Madrid once debts are factored in, according to data compiled by the financial media groups Bloomberg and Forbes. The offer would also make United about 10 times as expensive as publicly traded European teams such as Juventus.

Wall Street sources said that the United share offer has been oversubscribed by investors, although it is not yet clear what price they agreed to pay. "The book is looking pretty solid," one source confirmed. "It's covered."

...

It is understood that demand for the shares has been particularly high among US investors, who have bought a sales pitch that they are investing into a "luxury brand" and who appear unaffected by the dissenting voices who argue the offer overvalues the club. The investor roadshow, which saw United's team of 13 investment banks meeting their clients to sell them the shares, has also touched down in Asia as well as Europe, a leg of the trip that involved the bankers visiting investors in London this week.