Sir Alex Ferguson has spent 25 years as the manager of Manchester United and he has won the Premier League 12 times, FA Cup 5 times, League Cup 4 times, the Champions League twice, 10 Community/Charity Shields and one each of the now defunct Cup Winners’ Cup, Intercontinental Cup, FIFA World Club Cup and UEFA Super Cup. In his time, he has build and rebuilt at least 4 teams that have contributed in a large part to the trophies he has won and the legacy he has built at Old Trafford. The biggest and the highlight of all his achievements would undoubtedly be the Treble of 1999.  Hours away from our big FA Cup tie against our neighbours and current Premier League leaders, Manchester City, let’s look back to understand how special the Treble triumph was. What better way to do that then by assessing the trophies that we missed out on, on a couple of occasions as one of Sir Alex’s great teams went close to winning the Treble before and after 1999. Read the full story

That horrendous run of injuries which gave Sir Alex Ferguson so many nightmares this time last year are rearing their ugly head once again. Out of the 25 player squad Sir Alex selected at the beginning of the season, eight are either definitely out of contention for the visit to Villa Park on Saturday or are not expected to recover in time. Rooney, Hargreaves, Valencia, and Owen are all unavailable while Evra, Rafael, Anderson and Giggs are highly doubtful to make a full recovery.

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Manchester City manager Roberto Mancini seems to go out of his way to get on the wrong side of people. Maybe it’s the pressure that comes with such high expectations at his club but he seems to be getting a reputation for creating needless confrontations. He has only been at Eastlands for ten months yet in that time Mancini has had run ins with Robinho, Craig Bellamy, Stephen Ireland, Emmanuel Adebayor, Shay Given and what he himself describes as a “ballsy” dressing room argument with his captain Carlos Tevez last week.

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It was gut wrenching to see Antonio Valencia sustain that horrific injury on Tuesday night against Rangers, not just from a literal visual point of view, but because of the knowledge that the man must currently be going through immense mental and physical anguish and pain, the likes of which very few of us can relate to. Once that thought has sunk in, there is then the realisation that we are now without our first-choice right winger, and a brilliant one at that, for a significant part of the remaining season.

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The Argie unbelievably blasted the ball over the bar from just eight yards in front of an open goal with 15 minutes gone against Sunderland. It could change the game final score. But that shows you how the striker is still struggling to find his motivation following his World Cup 2010 campaign with Argentina. Read the full story

Reports have surfaced recently indicating that the interest rates on Manchester United’s infamous PIK loans have increased from 14.75% to 16.75% because of an inability to repay funds owed to Citadel, Och Ziff and Perry Capital (the three hedge funds with whom the debt was originally taken out), as specified in the terms of United’s debt restructuring back in 2006. So what does this mean for United? Is the price to pay for this situation a scaling back of investment in new players or price hikes as we fans often fear? It’s probably best to start from the beginning to see where this could lead to.

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