The Week So Far: Spurs, Ole, Rooney, Keane, Strikers, Links, Sunderland, Transfer Madness

The week that passed us by was another eventful one. Some heartbreak, some relief, some rather slow days, some crazy ones. Some days where we just hit our heads with one another and yelled the name of some striker before running around in circles for no apparent reason.

It was quite a week, that. So before moving on, let us reflect on the last seven days. We review some articles published by us as well as news items from other sources.

1. The biggest news of the week was Ole’s retirement. We all shed tears, got nostalgic to good measure. It was a nice time for most of us to revisit those golden moments with the legend. Not that we’ve ever tired of them before. Praises poured forth from all corners – be it Man United fan blogs, message boards or newspapers. We had our own two part piece. You can read them here and here. Other eulogies from fan blogs and MSM are here as follows:
   Republik of Mancunia
   The Telegraph
   The Independent
2. Moving on, we achieved our first win last Sunday, albeit a scrappy one. Most fans were extremely elated with that. So they would be. We are all prepared these days to get goals however they come. Anyway we had our take on the Spurs result. You can catch all our archived match reports on the tab at the top of the page, or by clicking here. We will also attempt to update stats and match highlights. Let us know if you find any broken links.
3. One of our regular readers Indianpunk pointed us to an excellent article posted in the fanzone section of the official website. It was written by a fan’s experience at OT during the Spurs game. I thought it was well detailed and a pretty long one too. Gives you a nice feel of the place and atmosphere.
4. Rooney has surprised a lot of people with his quick recovery. Apparently he has started jogging and should be back in three weeks’ time. However, we think he must not be rushed, however desperate our striker situation is. Players like Rooney are assets and the club must think long term before rushing him in. We already have another injury prone striker.
5. Louis Saha is expected to ‘play a part’ in the Sunderland game. He’d better. Hopefully we’d like to see him start alongside Tevez. Anderson is also expected to feature, on the bench at least.
6. This brings us to the Sunderland game, of which, we already have a preview. When we discuss Sunderland these days, it is impossible to not mention Roy Keane somewhere along the way. SAF said on Keane that he was the most influential player he had bought. You can read the piece on the club website.
   The gaffer also thinks that our five point gap is recoverable. We also hope so.
7. Much of fans frustrations these days have been directed at our sale of Rossi and Smith, while not replacing them adequately. Calls for Anelka, Berbatov, Huntelaar were thrown around in good measure. One of our contributors wrote a nice piece analysing the various strikers on offer.
8. And of course, with the transfer window madness of 31st August lot of people who run football websites are out to get maximum views and drum up some frenzy. Even Ahmed of Soccerlens blasted those type of people, but cleverly managed to do some of his own. 🙂
   We think that’s all fair, and while we’ve maintained our silence (and class!) so far, we thought we could let it out this one time. So here’s our own exclusive breaking news:

   United to swap Saha for Kaka.

   Royters, 31st Aug 2007: United line up a shocking swap deal with AC Milan for Brazilian ace Kaka with Louis Saha moving in the other direction. Milan supremo Silvio Berlusconi has said, “I have opened up my brand new Laboratorio dello Rossoneri where Old/fragile players go in on one end and come out as bionic men on the other. So swapping Kaka for Saha is an excellent piece of business for us. Saha is an unbelievably good specimen to test my machine on. So this deal is beneficial for both parties. We are also looking at Kieron Dyer. Unfortunately he hangs up the phone when I call him. He seems to think it’s a wind up. Hopefully that deal gets done before the window closes.” The deal is awaiting confirmation from both parties and updates will be posted.

9. Finally we’d love to know if you like a weekly round up like this or if you’d rather prefer the daily (albeit infrequent) round-ups we used to do in the off season. Now that the transfer window has shut, we expect quieter days. Although mid-week games and Champions’ League matches will ensure that we will keep the banter very much alive during the week. And yes, if you did like our site you may consider voting for us in the blogger’s choice awards in the Sports Blog category. We did have a good response so far, although the votes have dried up of late. 🙁

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