I’ve been reading about the Asia tour on the Manutd website. It sounds like the squad are working well together, and the new signings are playing well.

Queiroz says that the work the squad are doing in the heat and humidity is good for them, it will help them when they come back to playing back in England - I don’t see how, surely playing in heat and humidity will help their bodies get used to playing in heat and humidity, something we don’t really have a lot of over in England right now. Perhaps if they were training in tropical downpours and on pitches submerged to the tops of the goalposts in floodwater would they be preparing for the return back to England…

How much of these tours over to Asia is all about “getting the players fit” I wonder? I suspect its more about “getting the coffers fit”, and ensuring that lots of Ronaldo and Rooney shirts are sold in Japan and Korea. Not that I’m bothered, I’m a capitalist, so can’t complain when an organisation wants to cash in on their assets.

I read that Paul Scholes is now injured thanks to the Asia tour, that’s a shame as we could really use him in the first few weeks of the season to ensure we get a good start on Chelsea, Liverpool and Arsenal (should they turn up). It means we will have to rely on an untried midfield partnership of Hargreaves and Carrick, not something I am too worried about, however as we know they are both quality players. My only concern is that Carrick effectively did Hargreaves job last season, so could he be a bit rusty when forced to play the creative midfield role, a la Scholes? We will have to wait and see how August pans out…

I read on the ManUtd website (www.manutd.com) that a new home kit has been released - wasn’t it only last season that we had a new home kit? I thought Man Utd only changed the kit every 2 years, why has a new kit been released when the old one was only a season old? Think of all the new shirts that will fly out of the Mega Store on match day, great for Man Utd the business, but what about the fans? I hadn’t even gotten around to buying last seasons kit yet, was going to buy one for the next home game I went to, now I’ve missed it. 

Its all the parents out there that I feel for really. They’re the ones that will get pressured into shelling out another £40 on a shirt for their children just so that they have the ”latest” strip. If they only had to buy a new strip every 2 years, its not so bad, £20 a year, but every year seems a bit much! Its not like the football clubs don’t make enough money out of fans already. Ticket prices have gone up quite a bit recently, and the new TV deals mean they are getting millions of pounds of extra revenue from this season. I can’t remember the exact figure, but even the team that loses the premiership this season will get £30,000,000! That’s a hell of a lot of money just for coming last!

Owen Hargreaves is reportedly flying into Manchester this week to sign his contract and press some flesh. He’s apparently fit and ready to go. Great I say. I remember August last year, I was camping in Croyde with the missus, reading the newspaper and reading the headline “Got him”. It was referring to the story that Owen Hargreaves had stayed over in Manchester to sign a contract with United. I was well chuffed reading that, I thought he’d be brilliant. I’d been following the story all summer, since his displays in the World Cup. Shame it was a load of rubbish that wasn’t true, but we got him in the end, lets hope he puts in some great performances for United and helps us to win the Champions League again, now we’ve got our trophy back from Chelski!