Nation of Bore

Internationals still taking up the inches today, so not much around.

Some quotes from Carrick on England, from The Guardian:

"I realise this is an opportunity," he said. "I could spend a lot of time thinking about the past, but I can't blame everyone else that I've got so few caps – sometimes I haven't played well enough to get in the team.

"My ego is not that big to think I should have been playing every game for England, but it's up to me now to play well enough to play in the games ahead. A chance to start afresh. I am more than capable of being part of the team if I'm playing at my best.

"The manager didn't have to say too much to me to bring me back. I still want to be part of the England team. I'm delighted to be here again, I've missed the buzz, and, if I'm playing well enough and deserve my place, I'll get a fair chance of playing. If not, I won't."

The thing is, both in this story and Henry Winter in The Telegraph, it's said that he's been overlooked because of Gerrard and Lampard-

His 23 caps spread across 11 years, the 31-year-old Carrick knows that Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard continue to bar the way despite his well-received showing in Berne last month.

“The respect is there because they’re top players and they have been for so long,’’ reflected Carrick, who arrived in Chisinau with Gerrard, Lampard and company on Thursday. [The Guardian]

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Players such as Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard, for all the national team's inconsistencies, have at least offered a more dynamic approach and a goal threat to transform an occasion. That pair have cast Carrick to the periphery for more than a decade. [The Telegraph]

And England have been awful in possession and not looked like winning a damn thing for the whole decade, so it maybe shouldn't just be casually mentioned that they so obviously ahead of Carrick.  The question is why have manager after manager stuck with exactly the same failing plan?

In actual Man United news, The Mail make up a story about Nani's wage demands preventing his move to Zenit, when really it was the flying pigs...

Finally The Sun report that Rooney could be back before the end of the month, according to the player himself:

“The injury is going well. It could have been a lot worse than what it was. It is up to the doctor. When he declares me fit I will be ready.

“It feels good at the minute. The timescale put on it was four weeks. If that is the time they feel I need for the wound to heal properly then that is what I will do.

“What I don’t want to happen is to come back too early when it is not quite healed and it opens up again first game. That would just set me back again another four weeks.”

He added: “Overall, I think at the most I will miss four games."