Welcome to Liam “Wrestlemania” Brown’s Barry Norman/Claudia Winkleman impersonation. Finally, I have been asked to join the likes of Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert and become a film critic. Ok, maybe not, but we were kindly handed a copy of Rooney Goal Machine for our consideration, so after popping it on during a lazy Sunday Evening, I’ll tell you what I thought if you should lend me your ears…
Club legend Pat Crerand is urging the Manchester United faithful to get behind troubled striker Wayne Rooney when he takes the field at Old Trafford on Saturday as it will give him the lift he needs to rediscover the form which has deserted him. “Saturday is the perfect time for Wayne to get back amongst the goals and I’d urge all United fans to get behind him even more so than usual” Crerand said “It’s easy for players to lose their confidence but he’ll feel 100 per cent better if he walks out at Old Trafford and hears his name being sung by the fans.”
It’s amazing what can be found while doing a little bit of Googling! Four Four Two magazine asked their readers to send questions they would like to ask Manchester United legend George Best four years before he passed away in November 2005. His answers were then published in the magazine and are as interesting today as they were at that time. Some readers may have come across the answers Best gives in this article before but for those who like myself had never seen this piece, these are The Thoughts of George Best.
Between season 2000-01 and 2006-07, Manchester United went through their bleakest spell since the introduction of the Premier League. To finish runners up twice and in third position three times would have been more than acceptable to most clubs but not if their manager happened to be Sir Alex Ferguson whose standards are set so high that anything but champions is considered to be an abject failure. The 2002-03 campaign was the only one where those standards were met during that period with the title more or less clinched with a 4-0 thumping of Liverpool at Old Trafford in early April.
Nobody can ever accuse Sir Alex Ferguson of sitting on the fence about anything so it was no surprise to hear him predict that Wayne Rooney will be one of the biggest stars of the next World Cup. The Manchester United manager also feels that England may have had it too easy in qualifying for the 2010 Finals and that the only regret he has about showing Diego Forlan the Old Trafford door in 2004 was that he sold him too cheaply.
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The large number of players linked to Manchester United in the last few weeks has been extraordinary. A hardened cynic, like this one, could not be blamed for thinking that the vast majority of them never had a hope in hell of ever going through yet there is something about the proposed move of Rafael van der Vaart from Real Madrid that seems to be a little different. A gut feeling if you like, that this time, the transfer could prove to be the real thing.
