This is a United blog. I'm quite aware of that. We are also in the midst of the international week which, thankfully, is coming to an end. [Almost feels like a birthday present] But sometimes, even events that transpire during a spell of supposed irrelevance, such as yesterday, can turn out to be pertinent and worth discussing in a shrine such as this site so engrossed in red-tinted worship.

The Telegraph ran this story about a new set of Premier League rules being passed, giving the press and media rights holders wider access to the managers and players.

The gist of the story was:

1. players can be interviewed immediately after a match [ie, players of winning teams only.

A lot of you might have noticed the poppy flower adorning attire of managers, broadcasters, players' shirts etc. to mark Remembrance week. Sportsmail (or, indeed, the Daily Mail) have led this campaign to get all Premier League clubs to have an embroidered poppy on club kits. Personally, I didn't have much of a problem with a campaign of this sort.

Just two clips for today. Some curious bit of stuff from Ferguson.

This year on the FA's proposed England friendly in Qatar:

'All the international managers have their jobs to do and we support that, particularly when it comes to the issue of competitive games like the European Championships or the World Cup.

This is going to be a delayed reaction to the Ferguson-Alan Wiley incident, but it's international week, we have little else to talk about, so... sit tight, and read.

Ferguson's rant, comparing fitness of European refs to butchers' dogs, was, to put it mildly, genius. You don't get people with the ability to draw such comparisons every day.

It took a Paul Scholes header to get us past Besiktas the other day, in what was otherwise, a mind-numbingly stodgy match. Passes went astray, Rooney left isolated frustrated, even wingers failing to provide a cutting edge consistently; all in all, a classic away European performance from the runners-up.

I have a secret to admit - I love the attitude of seventeen year olds. Cocky? Arrogant? I've always believed that confidence should exceed talent by a simple 2:1 ratio. When the sun-earth-moon align, the solar eclipse can blind one with power and beauty. However, in my opinion, there is nothing uglier than when vision-reach-grasp align.

The tale of Fletcher's ascent is best sung to the familiar tune of "zero to hero." The young Scot, originally billed as the next Beckham, experienced a break-out season last term, making 26 Premier League appearances for United. However, when I try to explain his rise, I find myself at a loss for words.

I thought that might grab your attention. I'll apologise now for falsely raising your hopes and expectations as, let's be honest, this sort of transfer doesn't look likely to happen in the immediate future.

Although I have to admit that if I were in Sir Alex Ferguson's shoes, I would be trying damn hard to ensure that this, or a deal of similar proportions, was completed before the end of the current transfer window.

This has been a topic I've been meaning to touch upon for a long time but kept procrastinating till now. A report was up on the Guardian yesterday, where Sports Direct, a sports apparel business owned by businessman-cum-Newcastle owner (and and part-time clown in the local circus) Mike Ashley, was forced to apologise for printing shirts mocking the Hillsborough victims.

Elegant. Graceful. Patient. Methodical. If you could lineup your knuckles perfectly, would you knock out every single teeth in Berbatov's mouth? Or would you leave one individual front tooth hanging, a testament to the depths of your disdain?

Sir Alex fielded a slick-passing 4-4-2 against Birmingham, with Scholes and Fletcher providing muscle and Nani and Valencia as delegated flair specialists.

The brochure worked then. Brochure? What brochure? The Michael Owen brochure ofcourse. Yes Sir Alex has taken a gamble, of sorts, in bringing the striker to Old Trafford, offering him the chance to resurrect his career.

It's make or break time for our new number 7. With a World Cup only just around the corner, Owen will know that a successful season for United will see him creep into Fabio Capello's England squad that, bar an absolutely catastrophic collapse, will be heading to South Africa.

Our first pre-season friendly at home, against Valencia, ended in a comfortable 2-0 win for us, but the match was quite open and promised more goals than the score sheet would indicate.

Since it's pre-season, I'll just cap it with brief thoughts on the match and leave the stage for you to take over.

Luck isn't really a word you would associate with Ben Foster. He's had more than his fair share of misfortune during his stop-start career thus far although this could be the chance that the England international has been waiting for and, if you can excuse the pun, I'm sure he's ready to grab it with both hands.

Paul Pogba. I'm pretty sure none of us had heard anything about this young starlet before last week. In fairness, I doubt the season ticket holders at his former club Le Harve had even had the chance to comprehend his potential before he was whisked away under a cloud of smoke dosh.

Time to crack open the champagne?

There is no doubting the immeasurable void that's been left in the United side following the departure of one Cristiano Ronaldo. When you remove a player capable of scoring 42 goals in a single season, there's bound to be a gaping hole left behind. While Sir Alex clearly had no choice but to allow the Portuguese the chance to fulfil his dream of playing for Real Madrid, our trusty Scottish manager has undoubtedly had a major say on who potentially joins/has already joined the club this summer.

OK so it's hardly the best kept secret in European football but Jose Mourinho has admitted that he fancies a crack at succeeding Sir Alex at United. At 67-years-old, Ferguson clearly doesn't have too many more years of management left in him, but does the former Chelsea boss really tick all the right boxes?

I've been trying my best to sidestep the 'intelligent' mudslinging happening between the two Manchester clubs.[I am of course talking about this] It could be passed off as 'passion', and 'banter', but really it has got a lot more mileage than it deserved. But since Tim Rich continuing in what seems like a rather productive-looking Asian assignment for him pulled off a fantastic interview with the manager, I think I'll have to allow myself to be sucked into this.

This has been a topic I had been meaning to touch upon for a while but haven't until now.

Tim Rich, who seems to be The Guardian's man accompanying the United travelling party, has been doing his share of sending postcards from the far-east. Topics covered in his daily dispatches range from describing the boredom of our poor, grossly overpaid, footballers [boo, hoo.

This post was long overdue, but for some reason we never got around to posting this.

It has become a matter of common knowledge by now that Ferguson has made comments that our business is done for the summer.

"It's the end of our business, so forget all these stories about who we're supposed to be getting.

Fraizer Campbell is the latest in line of the more prominent youngsters deemed not good enough to make the grade at United. He was sold at £3.5m (which could potentially rise to £6m). Financially, I think we sold him a bit on the cheap when Hull were prepared to offer up to £7m as a one time fee.

It seems some people find it hard to move on. We all acknowledge that sometimes, in a relationship, both parties might have been at fault and, like adults, we say what we have to say, and move on.

The relationship between clubs and players, players and managers and players and fans is not that different in essence.

Reports filtered in yesterday, starting with the Guardian and the Independent that United have made it a long-term transfer policy of buying players only under 26 years of age.

The reports go on to claim that Berbatov's purchase was regarded as an exception to this rule. The main thinking behind this is that the resale value of a player would go down significantly if a player over 26 signed on for the club.

With Carlos Tevez' future still hanging in the balance we've seen the names of  a couple of big-name strikers bandied about who are being mooted as potential replacements for the Argentine.

Over the next month or so I'll be providing you with regular transfer rumour updates as the merry-go-round that is the summer window in European football gets into full swing.

In our concluding part of the three part series on our 2008/09 season we take a look at the most important component of our campaign the defence. A glance at our earlier two parts would give the impression that we've been a middling side with players averaging about 7. The defence would paint a much better picture mirroring the real reason behind our success.

Part II of this odyssey takes you to the realms of middle-earth, also known in modern times as the middle-field, or simply, midfield. The concept of the midfield here has been tweaked ever so slightly to consider only the positions in the centre of the park. The wings were covered in chapter one of this epic trilogy, so kindly proceed here to read it in case you haven't.

With transfer rumours in full tilt, let's behave like nothing is happening in the world around us apart from acknowledging that Roger Federer is destiny's only child and decide to look at the world that happened in the past year.

Since this is a trilogy with a chance of a bonus part; either, for purposes of completeness, or due to the commercial success of said trilogy we will devote a post each for attack, midfield and defence.

Before Sir Alex hands over his team-sheet to UEFA officials on Wednesday evening, you can't be quite sure on the exact eleven that will take to the field in Rome. Will Carlos Tevez be afforded his United swansong? Will Rio win his fitness battle? Will Giggs or Scholes be given the nod?

It's been quite a regular occurrence of late hasn't it? No I'm not talking about Ronaldo whinging or even a Carlos Tevez transfer story. I'm specifically referring to Wayne Rooney, his versatility and this endearing quality he possesses to play left wing.

Ok so it's not the biggest revelation since the discovery of electricity as it has been tried and tested before.

There was a side show an Arsenal game, which threatened, briefly, to become a party pooper that ended 0-0. On an ideal day we would have wanted to win the game, but a draw is the next best option. The relief on the United players faces were palpable by what ended up being a case of holding on for the last minutes.

When the suits at the FA decided to build the new Wembley they probably envisaged, or at least hoped, that they would possess a stadium capable of eclipsing that of any other in the country. I imagine the conversation ran something like this: ‘Well Old Trafford stands at around 60,000, let's make Wembley 90,000, just to be on the safe side.

It doesn't look good does it? Brought off at half-time whilst trailing at home to Tottenham which rather ironically then helps spark that tremendous comeback. I can understand why he wouldn't be desperate to stay behind and encourage his teammates but it was hardly the wisest of choices to make and it's difficult to defend a quite childish, sulky and rather petty reaction to yet another below-par individual performance.

With 10 Premier League titles, four FA Cup's and two Champions League trophies to boot, Ryan Giggs has achieved more with Manchester United in eighteen years then Manchester City ever have in their entire history (although chin up Dimitar, you've probably won more in half a season with us too).

The recently crowned PFA Player of the Year has been enduring some pretty harsh criticism over the last few days purely because his fellow professional peers deemed it appropriate he receive the prestigious award.

Before we start discussing this United legend and his future at the club, let's get talk of that magnificent milestone out of the way, as only a typically limelight loathing Paul Scholes would want us to do. I'm sure you don't need me to tell you but Wednesday's 2-0 victory over Portsmouth signalled Scholes' 600th appearance in a Manchester United shirt.

I haven't actually written a match report on this but there was a pseudo report yesterday when Stephen Darwin wrote on Berbatov which also sparked off heated debate on his value.

I'll try to touch on some of the things I didn't talk about in the comments over the past couple of days.

The main issue that's perhaps divided a lot of fans was team selection.