Manchester United news and links

Gary Neville has admitted United will only have themselves to blame if their bid for a record fourth successive league title fails on Sunday.


Although United have succeeded in taking the battle to the last day, unless Wigan can claim an unlikely point at Stamford Bridge, Chelsea will end the Reds’ recent dominance of the Premier League.

Preston await Danny Welbeck’s decision after the Manchester United striker was invited to rejoin the club on loan next season.

• Manchester United striker praises Ecuadorean winger
• ‘I couldn’t have scored the amount of goals I have without him’

Wayne Rooney has named Antonio Valencia as the key to his success this season, saying the winger’s quality has been vital in helping him reach 26 Premier League goals.

Rooney, this week voted Manchester United’s player of the year, said Valencia was the team-mate he enjoyed playing alongside most.

“I couldn’t have scored the amount of goals I have this season without him,” Rooney told the BBC’s Match of the Day magazine. “He’s been great this year and the quality of balls he puts in the box for me has been unbelievable.”

Rooney added that the goals he enjoyed scoring most this season were those with his head. “It’s something I’ve been working on a lot, so I’m really happy about that. It just goes to show that the more you practise something, the better you get at it.”

Manchester United confirm that Northern Ireland defender Jonny Evans has signed a new four-year contract with the club.

In a revealing interview, Sir Alex assesses the season, Rooney’s form, and signings.

Sir Alex Ferguson has confirmed Jonny Evans is on the verge of signing a new long-term contract.


After spending a couple of spells on loan at Sunderland, Evans has made huge progress in the last two seasons at Old Trafford.

Sir Alex Ferguson has revealed he talked Paul Scholes out of retiring.


The midfield maestro has signed a one-year contract extension with United after initially expressing doubts over whether to continue with his career, which could yet yield him a 10th Premier League title winners medal next week.

Ben Foster has endured a painful season - shattered confidence; ambitions of being United’s number one in tatters; dreams of the World Cup with England ruined.


He had the world in his hands and the 27-year-old goalkeeper allowed it to slip through his fingers.

Owen is delighted to be back and feels he can keep going for a while yet.

One-time United trainee Mike Pollitt could be in goal for Wigan this Sunday.

Sir Alex Ferguson has confirmed Jonny Evans is on the verge of signing a new long-term contract.


After spending a couple of spells on loan at Sunderland, Evans has made huge progress in the last two seasons at Old Trafford.

Sir Alex Ferguson has revealed he talked Paul Scholes out of retiring.


The midfield maestro has signed a one-year contract extension with United after initially expressing doubts over whether to continue with his career, which could yet yield him a 10th Premier League title winners medal next week.

Ben Foster has endured a painful season - shattered confidence; ambitions of being United’s number one in tatters; dreams of the World Cup with England ruined.


He had the world in his hands and the 27-year-old goalkeeper allowed it to slip through his fingers.

Ben Foster pays tribute to United’s Reserves after his shootout heroics.

• Ian Beasley to get progress reports on five United players
• Feedback also wanted from Tottenham and Liverpool

The England team doctor, Ian Beasley, is visiting the training grounds of several Premier League clubs this week to make a final check on the fitness of players before Fabio Capello names his provisional 30-man squad for the World Cup next Tuesday.

It is understood that the most significant stop-off of his tour will be at Carrington, Manchester United’s training HQ, where he will ask for updates from the club’s medical staff on Rio Ferdinand, Wayne Rooney, Wes Brown, Gary Neville and Owen Hargreaves.

Although only the first two are “definites”, Capello would like to have Brown’s versatility at his disposal in South Africa, the very quality that still gives Hargreaves, who made his first appearance for United in 18 months on Sunday, a faint chance of making the training squad.

Beasley is also expected to visit Liverpool, to check on Glen Johnson, Tottenham, where he will ask for feedback on Aaron Lennon, Tom Huddlestone and Ledley King, before taking a final look at Fulham’s Bobby Zamora who has been struggling with an achilles injury for the past month.

Wayne wins three United awards, including Player of the Year and best goal.

Ritchie De Laet is named as the Denzil Haroun Reserve Player of the Year.

Will Keane collects United’s Young Player of the Year award.

• Manchester United midfielder was unhappy about his form
• Manager’s reassurance raised his game and changed his mind

Sir Alex Ferguson has revealed he had to dissuade Paul Scholes from retiring at the end of the season after the Manchester United player expressed doubts about his ability to continue at the highest level for another year.

Scholes, famously self-critical despite a career that has established him as one of the Premier League’s more revered footballers, approached Ferguson last month to say he was unhappy with his form and was seriously considering ending his playing days at 35. “He intimated that he may retire at the end of the season,” Ferguson said. “I said: ‘I’ll decide when you retire … look, Paul, you can play, there’s no question of that. Your ability’s there, there’s no deterioration in your actual play.’”

Scholes has started to take his coaching badges but Ferguson convinced him to sign a one-year contract and, since then, the midfielder has been in his best form of the season. “When you get to his age – and the same goes for Ryan Giggs and Gary Neville – there’s a deterioration in the [player’s] physical aspect,” Ferguson added. “That’s natural. We all face that. But in terms of his ability, there’s no deterioration whatsoever. In fact, Paul’s every bit as good, if not even better, because the experience he’s added to the ability he’s got means he’s a big asset to us.”

Scholes has been so impressive recently that Ferguson believes the former England player would be an automatic choice for Fabio Capello’s World Cup squad had he not retired from international football at 29. “I don’t think Paul’s the type to feel bitter about that or feel he’d lost something in his life,” Ferguson told Inside United magazine. “He made his decision based on his family and I think it helped him [at United] for the initial couple of years after he retired from the international scene.

“But he had a great career at that level. He should have no recriminations because it’s allowed him to move his career on here to the extent that we’ve given him a new contract.”

Since the turn of the year United have also given one-year deals to Giggs, Neville and Edwin van der Sar and Ferguson has confirmed that Jonny Evans has signed a four-year contract.

Evans, described by Ferguson this season as a “natural replacement for Rio Ferdinand,” had initially been offered a weekly salary of £40,000 but was holding out for better terms. A compromise has been reached and the 22-year-old Northern Ireland international has agreed a deal that moves him into the club’s middle bracket of earners.

Ferguson is mentally preparing to surrender the Premier League title to Chelsea and has said he will not torture himself by looking back over where United dropped points.

Chelsea are guaranteed to finish first and end United’s hopes of a fourth straight league title if they beat Wigan Athletic at Stamford Bridge on Sunday. They lead the table by a single point but Ferguson said tonight that he would not spend time wondering how his team might be going into their final match, against Stoke City, holding the advantage.

“I used to look at every game but you can torture yourself with that,” he said. “We lost at Burnley at the start of the season. That was three points and we also missed a penalty. If we had scored that, we might have won or at least got a draw that might have made a difference. We had a couple of refereeing decisions against Chelsea. You could look at all things. You can twist and torture yourself but it happens. We get breaks ourselves sometimes.”

Ferguson was speaking to United’s television station at the club’s awards evening, where Wayne Rooney won three trophies and promised at least one more to come. “This has been the best year of my career so far but there is more in the tank for the World Cup,” the striker said. “We are the best country, so we are definitely going to win it.”

• Fans complain of being refused entry at United reserve game
• Police and stewards come under fire from supporters’ groups

Manchester United supporters’ groups have angrily accused police and stewards of heavy-handed tactics in dealing with protesters against the club’s owners, the Glazer family, after some fans were refused entry to yesterday’s reserve match at Old Trafford.

The Manchester United Supporters Trust (Must) and the Independent Manchester United Supporters Association (Imusa) both today issued statements accusing Manchester United stewards, supplied by a subcontractor named CES that has a long-term contract with the club, of denying fans entry to the game against Aston Villa.

“Fans have heard from Sir Alex [Ferguson] and David Gill [the club’s manager and chief executive respectively] that ‘everyone has a right to protest’ but seen CES stewards violently confiscate protest flags and harass protesters in a number of other ways,” Imusa said.

“This harassment has included conducting illegal searches, sometimes on minors, throwing out dads and lads on trumped-up accusations of inciting other fans to violence that the club have been unable to substantiate, and packing out the aisles with police and stewards in breach of safety regulations in order to suppress these protests.”

The supporters’ groups said a party of teenagers had been ejected from Old Trafford yesterday by police without a valid reason. One supporter, who did not want to be named, said that he and his friends were told they would not be able to bring their anti-Glazer banner into the ground because it contravened rules on the size of banner that would be permitted.

Having returned it to their car, he said the group was twice approached by the same group of police officers and told they had been recognised from YouTube footage of a Must stunt when “Love United Hate Glazer” messages were projected on to Old Trafford.

A Manchester United spokesman said only three supporters had been refused admission, two of them because of unacceptable behaviour at previous reserve matches played at Altrincham FC. He said the club were “entirely comfortable” with the actions of their stewards.

The supporters’ groups claimed that stewards were guilty of covering up identity cards that they were required to display by law, but Manchester United said there was an exemption from that rule for stewards in football grounds.

“If they behaved at Old Trafford as they had behaved at reserve games at Altrincham, they would not have been allowed in,” the spokesman said. He said it was “nonsense” to suggest that fans were being targeted because they had been photographed at anti-Glazer protests, and did not recognise claims from Must and Imusa that photographs of more than 20 fans had been circulated among stewards and police.

Attention will now turn to Sunday’s last match of the season, at which Must have called for a final mass protest against the ownership of the Glazers ahead of a bid being submitted from the Red Knights group of wealthy Manchester United fans within a month of the end of the season.

The spokesman said anti-Glazer protests, likely to intensify if Chelsea are winning at Stamford Bridge, so putting the title beyond Manchester United, would be permitted as long as they did not contravene regulations on the size of banners allowed.

A Greater Manchester police spokesman said: “Greater Manchester police has a policy of allowing peaceful protest to take place.”

Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson reveals he talked Paul Scholes out of retiring.

• Manchester United benefit from decision to quit England scene
• ‘Durability of Scholes, Giggs and Neville is defying everyone’

Sir Alex Ferguson has revealed that he managed to talk his midfield veteran Paul Scholes out of retiring. Scholes has signed a one-year contract extension with Manchester United after initially expressing doubts over whether to continue with his career, which could yet yield him a 10th Premier League title winner’s medal next week.

Recent performances suggest it was the correct move, with Scholes being as influential as any United player as his side take Chelsea to the last day of the season.

His recent last-gasp matchwinner at Manchester City was a throwback to the 35-year-old Scholes’s halcyon days.

Although Ferguson admitted he needed to twist the player’s arm, he was not willing to let such ability slip through his fingers. “I did speak to him,” Ferguson told United’s magazine Inside United. “He’d intimated that he may retire at the end of the season. I said: ‘I’ll decide when you retire … look, Paul, you can play, there’s no question of that. Your ability’s there, there’s no deterioration in your actual play.’

“When you get to his age, and the same goes for Ryan Giggs and Gary Neville, there’s a deterioration in the physical aspect of it. That’s natural. We all face that. But in terms of his ability, there’s no deterioration whatsoever.

“In fact, Paul’s every bit as good, if not even better, because the experience he’s added to the ability he’s got means he’s a big asset to us – as he was against City. He helped to control the match.”

Ferguson believes United are benefiting from Scholes’s decision to focus his energy purely on club matters. Never the greatest traveller, Scholes quit the England scene following Euro 2004 even though he had yet to reach his 30th birthday.

The current England manager, Fabio Capello, never made any attempt to change the midfielder’s mind, knowing it was futile. Steve McClaren tried more than once, but Ferguson knew it was not a decision Scholes would ever have cause to regret, even if England win the World Cup this summer.

“I don’t think Paul’s the type to be bitter about that or feel he’d lost something in his life,” Ferguson said. “He made his decision based on his family and I think it helped him for the initial couple of years after he retired from the international scene.

“But he had a great career at that level. He should have no recriminations because it’s allowed him to move his career on here to the extent that we’ve given him a new contract.

“Age always comes into it and Ryan Giggs, Gary Neville and Paul Scholes are not going to last forever. But they’re defying everyone at the moment in terms of their durability and enthusiasm to play. How they’ve looked after themselves has been critical and a monumental part of why they’re still here.”

Yet, while the international days of Scholes and Giggs are behind them, Ferguson still feels Neville could enjoy a glorious autumn to his career in South Africa this summer. “He has got a great chance,” Ferguson said. “Fabio has not got a really settled right-back.

“Wes Brown has been injured for a while and you have got Glen Johnson at Liverpool, but Gary’s experience, as he showed in the derby against Craig Bellamy, makes him the top man at the moment. His form has been fantastic.”

Mamlook, trained by David Pipe, wins the Chester Cup in a photo finish from Tastahil.

Manchester Evening News sports editor Pete Spencer will be online here at 3pm on Tuesday to discuss all the latest sporting topics.


He’s been monitoring all the developments at United and City, along with reporters Stuart Mathieson and Stuart Brennan, as a dramatic season goes down to the wire.

Will Keane and Ravel Morrison on target at Everton to clinch Group C title.

I was stunned by some of the stuff emanating from Liverpool fans last week.


I am fully aware of the bitter rivalry between United and the Anfielders, but I wasn’t quite prepared for the level of vitriol when TV went canvassing their opinions.

I was stunned by some of the stuff emanating from Liverpool fans last week.


I am fully aware of the bitter rivalry between United and the Anfielders, but I wasn’t quite prepared for the level of vitriol when TV went canvassing their opinions.

Sir Alex says three other Reds should be in contention for tonight’s individual honours.

Potential Manchester United target Gianluigi Buffon would choose to move to England if Juventus were to show him the exit door at the end of the season.


The 32-year-old, who remains the world’s most expensive goalkeeper after his move for around £32million from Parma to Juve in 2001, is under contract with the Turin giants for three more years but has been linked with Arsenal, United and Manchester City.

You’ve voted the tricky winger ManUtd.com’s Player of the Month.

Today’s spillage does not kill turtles

Ah, they’re so caring and cuddly, the Conservatives. We know because, well, would you just look at their lovely logo. A beautiful little tree, drawn with a crayon by a kindergarten prodigy. Way to reinvent your image. It would be enough to win the Mill’s vote if it weren’t for the fact that our local Tories have only gone and cast doubt on their new green credentials by stuffing no fewer than 256,783 flyers through the Mill’s letterbox in the last two weeks. There’s some budgetary cuts that could have been made right there …

Speaking of budgetary cuts, during this season you may have heard something about Liverpool being in dicey financial straits as well as a lowly league position. Well, according to one Fleet Street organ, that’s not going to stop them bringing Joe Cole to Anfield this summer – even though Tottenham are also in for the soon-to-be-former Chelsea jinker and can offer him a) more money and, perhaps, b) Champions League action. Of course, since the same organ has also been insisting, along with all the others, that Rafael Benítez is about to hotfoot it to Juventus as haggling over the ownership of the club continues in a behind-the-scenes bazaar, it is hard to know who might be steering any Liverpool recruitment drives at this stage. Or why any decent player would want to go there right now.

Fernando Torres is a decent player and though his heart says “stay and pray’, his agent says “Manchester City, Chelsea or Barcelona“.

A specially fabricated Mill poll has shown widespread yearning for Manchester City among the agent community, with 90% of respondents suggesting they would “bash [their] client’s head in with a well-thumbed Ferrari brochure” if they turned down an offer from Eastlands. The other 10% made indecipherable spluttering sounds snorting spritzy talcum powder off a glamour model’s waxed pectorals.

The Mill did not, we must admit, ask the representative of Ángel Di María, the tricky Benfica winger who is said to be the subject of some lusty serenading by City and, like most of the best Argentinian players, uncertain of a place in Diego Maradona’s World Cup squad.

City’s noisy neighbours, meanwhile, are planning to kick off a spectacular tiff with David Moyes, with the winner securing the services of a highly-talented Spaniard who will also not be at the World Cup, but not because his country’s manager is odder than seven, rather because Spain have a preposterous number of gifted midfield schemers so don’t actually need Mikel Arteta.

Moyes will attempt to keep Arteta at Goodison by making some tip-top signings. He hopes Carlton Cole fits that description. He will also duke it out with Harry Redknapp and Martin O’Neill for Bayern Munich’s Hamit Altintop, who’s available on a free transfer this summer.

Sir Alex Ferguson will wave goodbye to Ben Foster – who is Birmingham-bound – and then say hello to Atlético Madrid stopper Sergio Asenjo.

Arsène Wenger has spotted 74 goalkeepers better than Lukasz Fabianski and is locked in a ferocious battle with his own ego to determine whether he will admit it.

Meanwhile, once Blackburn boss Sam Allardyce recovers from the laugh attack he suffered after hearing Wenger’s post-match interview yesterday, he will put in bids for Sporting Gijón defender Roberto Canella and … Thierry Henry, who will surely move to the MLS instead.

Finally, Connor Wickham, 17, has made such a fine impression in his few late-season appearances in the Championship that Spurs, Fulham and Wolves all want to take the striker from Ipswich, with the bidding to start at £6m.

If one of the more bizarre endings to this strange Premier League season happens - then United will be kicking themselves.


The improbable scenario next Sunday afternoon - is that Wigan win at Stamford Bridge.

Is Alex McLeish looking across Manchester for Joe Hart’s replacement.

Potential Manchester United target Gianluigi Buffon would choose to move to England if Juventus were to show him the exit door at the end of the season.


The 32-year-old, who remains the world’s most expensive goalkeeper after his move for around £32million from Parma to Juve in 2001, is under contract with the Turin giants for three more years but has been linked with Arsenal, United and Manchester City.

If one of the more bizarre endings to this strange Premier League season happens - then United will be kicking themselves.


The improbable scenario next Sunday afternoon - is that Wigan win at Stamford Bridge.

It could be a while before the next great side emerges in England, but that may be no bad thing

If Chelsea beat Wigan Athletic on Sunday they will reclaim the Premier League title and no Stamford Bridge fan would care a jot that they would have done so with 86 points, the lowest total for any champions since 2003. The statistic, indeed, is highly encouraging for the sport at large in its hint that the top flight is on the verge of change.

As economics shift, so too does the hierarchy of the game. It has already been a while since brute wealth reduced opponents to a state of helplessness before the game even started. Should Carlo Ancelotti prevail in this campaign it will be because he has influenced the Chelsea squad rather than rebuilt it.

In the weekend’s 2-0 victory at Anfield, there was not a single member of the starting line-up who had been bought by him. Management in many places has reverted to the traditional virtues of making the most of what you already have. There will always be acquisitions, but Manchester United are sustaining their challenge to Chelsea while counting on people who were once Alex Ferguson’s fledglings.

Gary Neville, Paul Scholes and Ryan Giggs all took part in FA Youth Cup finals in the early 1990s, but the manager is asking them now to strive for a major prize even as the plumage of those former fledglings grows sparser still. Not even Ferguson can intimidate time, however, and the passing of the years will harm the club if there are no means to buy elite footballers.

Upheaval is registering elsewhere, too. Liverpool, at best, will come sixth this season and an unbroken run of Champions League appearances that started in 2004 has now snapped. Anfield fans, however, have a deeper disquiet than that. There are no signs of a takeover being completed, but without it a mid-table position could start to look natural at a club where squad strength is waning fast.

We are already seeing fresh contenders emerge. At Eastlands tomorrow Manchester City and Tottenham Hotspur will each be vying for a spot in the Champions League, a tournament that has not featured either team since the 60s, when it was still known as the European Cup. Money has much to do with the upsurge of City in particular and a step into the grandest competition would surely bring another surge of cash from Sheikh Mansour.

That, however, is an anomaly. Extravagance is less common in a period when club proprietors often concentrate on holding on to their wealth. There have been doubts as to whether Martin O’Neill will stay at Aston Villa and the sort of gossip there concerns the prospects of retaining Ashley Young or James Milner, rather than of Randy Lerner producing the funds for an upgrade in the squad.

We are entering the sort of landscape that should look full of beauty and promise for Arsène Wenger. The Arsenal manager, with good cause, makes his charges of “financial doping” against rivals, but there are no longer so many clubs who would test positive for unacceptable levels of affluence.

Wenger’s frugality assists in paying off the £390m cost of building the Emirates Stadium and he has indicated that Arsenal’s cash flow can now begin to pour more freely into his budget. Judging by the type of speculation that presently links him to a £22m bid for the Ajax forward Luis Suárez, the manager may yet see the day when a ground with a 60,000 capacity in a relatively rich city puts him in a stronger financial position than almost all of his Premier League counterparts.

Even as matters stand, there ought to be pressure on Wenger to compete more vigorously. No spree is anticipated at United and Roman Abramovich does not look inclined to cut loose at Chelsea. Any opportunity for Arsenal, of course, will remove Wenger from a comfort zone in which he is complimented on the style of his side and excused for the lack of honours since the 2005 FA Cup.

The league title had gone to Highbury the year before, but Abramovich was just getting into his stride at Stamford Bridge and José Mourinho took the reins in that summer of 2004. We are in a very different period now and the comparative austerity is to be measured in the elimination of United, Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool before the Champions League semi-finals this season.

It could be a while before we see the next exceptional side emerge, but there are compensations. Although the Premier League may not hit the heights, interest will soar if the dull old certainties have vanished.

Also this week: Ancelotti and Ferguson square off in The Sopranos, The Wire - and in a snail race

Wigan boss Roberto Martinez promises Manchester United his side will be no pushovers when they take on Premier League title-chasing Chelsea on Sunday

Solskjaer is proud to see United’s never-say-die spirit in his side.

United’s match-winner says Reds won’t relinquish the title without a fight.

Edwin van der Sar and his colleagues expected Chelsea to win at Anfield.

Antonio’s fine first season will encourage United to make similar signings.

Check out celebration shots from the Reserves’ playoff win over Villa.

Sir Alex Ferguson admits United are clutching at straws in the title race.

Ben Foster’s tormented season ended in triumph in another bizarre twist in the United keeper’s incredible tale.

The one-time England World Cup hopeful would have been counting the days to Fabio Capello naming his squad for South Africa at the end of this month had he not blown his golden chance with the Reds seniors earlier in the campaign.

Ben Foster’s tormented season ended in triumph in another bizarre twist in the United keeper’s incredible tale.

The one-time England World Cup hopeful would have been counting the days to Fabio Capello naming his squad for South Africa at the end of this month had he not blown his golden chance with the Reds seniors earlier in the campaign.

United eye victory at Sunderland after Chelsea beat Liverpool.

Sir Alex labels Steven Gerrard’s Anfield gaffe a ‘great gift’ to Chelsea.

Manchester Evening News sports editor Pete Spencer will be online here at 3pm on Tuesday to discuss all the latest sporting topics.


He’s been monitoring all the developments at United and City, along with reporters Stuart Mathieson and Stuart Brennan, as a dramatic season goes down to the wire.

Reds rule England after edging an enthralling playoff on penalties.