Silence is (not) golden

There are some people in this life who say too little and others who say too much.

Alex Ferguson, for example, is most definitely in the latter category. Everyone’s favourite knight of the realm has spent much of the last week getting indignant about Real Madrid’s attempts to entice Cristiano Ronaldo to the Bernabau.

“Real think they can ride roughshod over everyone, but they won't do it with us. They have no moral issues,” barked Fergie, after penning letters of complaint to FIFA, UEFA, the United Nations, and Points of View.

Of course, the red-faced old buffoon definitely didn’t spend the last couple of years playing a very public game of kiss chase with Owen Hargreaves. And there’s no way he would have expressed his interest in signing Lyon’s Karim Benzema through the press, no siree, because that would make him a big hypocrite. I’m sure I speak for us all when I say it’s lucky Sir Alex is around to keep the rest of the football world on the straight and narrow.

While Sir Alex has been mouthing off, our board of directors have been quieter than a convention of church mice. Communication from the club isn’t great at the best of times, but it seems to have a dwindled to a trickle since that game at Wembley. And so we are forced to read about the (presumably imminent) departure of Albrighton to Stevenage in the local press, with only a terse “no comment” from our chairman, plus the usual rhetoric about the club being in the best financial position for years.

As I said yesterday, I doubt whether implosion is imminent, and you imagine the slimming down of our squad is to prevent future problems rather than cure current ones. But unless the board say something definitive one way or the other speculation will continue and the Evening News will continue to run OH MY GOSH UNITED IN SHOCK FINANCIAL MELTDOWN!!!!! stories. I am quite happy to accept that both the squad and the backroom staff are being restructured, but without a statement containing some cold hard facts it’s hard not to be concerned about where we’re heading.

Oh well, I guess we just have to wait and see. I’m sure I’ll feel a lot better when Jimmy returns from his holiday armed with a suitcase full or duty free fags and a bunch of players ready to lead our glorious charge back to league football, or something.