Ok, I simply don’t get it. Not only do we fail to get all the Midfielders including Sneijder, Ozil, Ireland, heck even Jack Rodwell ever linked with United in the last 2 months, but we then let out only promising hope for a Scholes’s replacement go out on a season-long loan. Season-long! It’s not even like he’s gone just for the weekend or something, a little hop down to visit the family. He’s gone for the friggin season, and now our cover for the position in case Scholesy gets injured (likely), suspended (likelier), gets arthritis (likeliest) is apparently Darron Gibson. Dear God, I shudder at the thought.
I must say, I do not head the United scouting team and did not discover Cleverley when he was a sprightly young lad of 14. I’ve seen him only in our pre-season games and then a lot more of his complitation videos over the last 8 hours as he joined United’s latest list of ‘Outs’ in that damned transfer list. Anyone who saw his goal against the MLS All-Stars will have a satisfactory smile on their face – the type you get when you take a dump so big that your pants fit better. Surrounded by three, admittedly not John-Terry-caliber defenders, our man hops around a couple of them, takes the ball over the third and sweetly finishes into the bottom right on the volley… the kind of finish Nani should’ve showed in the first half of our West Ham game. As opposed to that horrible into-orbit-lob that he tried.
[VIDEO: Cleverl(e)y beating his man]
This is a player who could’ve been sent out in those FA Cup/Carling Cup early round ties against Swansea or Plymouth or some such fixtures so that he can get out there and play it the United way. The boy seems extremely willing to bomb forward, and when he does, he does a pretty good job of ensuring the ball lands up in the back of the net. If he did that a couple of times in a United shirt in the early season games, he could’ve even got a run out during our ‘easy’ home games, though we don’t seem to get too many of those these days. Basically this entire paragraph boils down to one thing – We could have used him!
That seems to be that in the ‘market’ for us this season then. We have spent £25Million on two ‘future prospects’ and one ‘wait, why did we buy him exactly?’ At this rate, our entire squad strength will remain the 15-16 who set out for our last three games+Gibson+Anderson. This is as opposed to the roughly £50million-worth bench that Man City manages week in and week out. Someone is bound to get injured, or bound to lose their mojo or bound to take off their shirt and get a yellow which suspends them just in time for the Chelsea match (shudder again). And then we’re in deep shit.
The only good thing that can come out of all this, as well noted by BBC, is if Harry manages to bring van der Vaart to London, with his lovely missus in tow. She’s the Man City-type shake-up that the WAGs table of English Football badly needs, now that Cheryl’s also gone splitsville with Cuntley. Hope the stuck-ups at the Premier League Transfers committee or whatever it is see the immense value add of this proposition…
- There IS still value in the market