When Wayne Rooney released a statement last week denying the story that he had changed his Twitter bio to omit "Manchester United player", you knew he wanted to leave. That week the press had also reported that Rooney had met with Sir Alex a fortnight ago to tell him he wanted to leave, but Rooney made no comment to deny that.
Following our 1-0 win over Galatasaray last night, Sir Alex Ferguson claimed he thought Robin van Persie should have taken the second half penalty that Nani missed.
United have had three penalties this season, taken by Van Persie, Chicharito and now Nani, and all three of them have missed. Whilst that is a concern in itself, I can't believe that United are going in to Champions League games with no instruction from the manager on penalty taking duties.
When the final whistle blew at the Stadium of Light on the 13th of May 2012, Sir Alex Ferguson
applauded his players, and waited for the news. The news was not good. Manchester City had scored
at the death against QPR, and snatched the title on goal difference. Phil Jones wore a look of
utter distress; Dimitar Berbatov put his hand behind his head and stared into the distance.
"Did you cheer, did you cheer, did you cheer when Beckham scored?" we would sing to opposition
fans following David Beckham's transformation from villain to hero in the eyes of England fans.
After his sending off in the World Cup 1998 he was given an awful time in this country, with
effigies of him being hung in London, his face at the centre of cut out dart boards in the tabloids
and vile abuse from the stands.
I had a number of versions of this written and ready to publish but wasn't sure which one would be most entertaining or enjoyable for the average Republik of Mancunia reader. I did, in fact, send two of these versions to Scott and if you're reading this one (Version 2) he has decided that Version 1 didn't deserve a place on his website.
FIFA Law 12: "Reckless" means that the player has acted with complete disregard of the danger to, or consequences for, his opponent. A player who plays in a reckless manner shall be cautioned.
This seems to sum up fairly well the two incidents above. Both Diego López and Nani were trying to win the ball but both of them went in without considering the consequences for their opponent.
"We don't need to give away stupid plastic flags to our fans to wave, our supporters are always there with their hearts and that is all we need. Its the passion of the fans that helps us to win matches, not flags. Chelsea fans lack passion."
I'm sure at the time these words raised his legend status amongst his own fans, with Liverpool supporters despising the moden day Chelsea, as the two clubs repeatedly came to blows in the Champions League.
Earlier this season, Manchester United beat Chelsea 3-2 at Stamford Bridge, with the blues reduced to nine men. United had gone 2-0 up early on only to see Chelsea claw two goals back. With quarter of an hour remaining, Javier Hernandez scored the winning goal.
Our Mexican isn't very popular with Chelsea fans because of how regularly he scores against them.
Luis Suarez is continuing to fulfil his role as a victim perfectly at Liverpool in his recent
statements about his eight match ban for the racial abuse of Patrice Evra. A born and bred scouser
would be proud of Suarez's efforts to appear innocent and blameless.
Manchester City fans have spent decades complaining about United receiving favourable decisions
from the referee. This season, City messageboards were filled with talk of a 'conspiracy', in which
the FA and Sky Sports were working against City to help United win the title. Seriously.
The debatable decisions table shows that United would have won the league by five points if the
referee had always made the correct decisions in United games.
Firstly, Happy New Year to one and all. You are seeing one of my resolutions in action by reading this having not posted anything on here since mid November (and a thumping 5-2 win over Spurs) I'm starting 2013 by making an attempt to return to writing. It is, however, something of a rant-driven return.
The ever growing saga of the present day Arsenal "fan" runs along the lines of "Wenger out!" When I recently polled a group of Arsenal supporters during the half of a match, the consensus was the following:
How long have you been an Arsenal fan? Most answered with a date range of when Wenger was already on board.
In darker moments, when all rationale and clarity has gone AWOL and I've struggled to find
cohesion, it's difficult to see the positives when concentrating solely on the negatives. If
Monsieur Wenger has time, or even instructs a member of his staff to read the myriad of Arsenal
Blogs, I hope 'ArsenalArsenal' is right up there as 'A must read.
In darker moments, when all rationale and clarity has gone AWOL and I've struggled to find
cohesion, it's difficult to see the positives when concentrating solely on the negatives. If
Monsieur Wenger has time, or even instructs a member of his staff to read the myriad of Arsenal
Blogs, I hope 'ArsenalArsenal' is right up there as 'A must read.
Gareth Barry was charged by the FA yesterday for verbally abusing fourth official Mark Clattenburg following City's 3-2 defeat against Manchester United. The result could have been a lot worse for the blues if the linesman didn't incorrectly rule out Ashley Young's goal, which would have put us 3-0, and if the referee didn't miss Kolo Toure fouling Patrice Evra in the box.
You would think that by now we would be used to it. Dramatic last gasp wins have been commonplace for Manchester United fans during Sir Alex Ferguson's reign. It doesn't seem to matter how often we do it though, it feels fucking fantastic every single time. That realisation, a second or so before the ball hits the net, when you're deep in to injury time, is one of the greatest feelings you'll ever experience, and as United fans, we get to experience it more than most.
Four minutes in to Manchester United's 4-0 win over Wigan, the Stretford End starting singing the Luis Suarez "racist bastard" chant. The chant that followed was "always the victims, it's never their fault". This is a standard occurrence at Old Trafford and United's away games, dating back to almost a year ago following Liverpool FC's refusal to accept that Luis Suarez was guilty of racially abusing Patrice Evra.
The journey started at 4.30am which is earlier than anyone should ever be made to get up at.
After a quick enough flight from Manchester to Amsterdam for the connecting flight to Norway, we
finally paid attention to the fact our destination airport was Sandefjord, not Oslo. It was fine,
there were shuttle buses outside.
After polling our rapidly growing and ever faithful Twitter following, @Red_Rants has compiled a
Top 5 headed goals list. The list has no headers from pre 1995 so I'm sure many of the older reds
will think someone's having a giggle, but the list, I'm sure you'll agree, consists of 5 superb
headers all provoking [.
Self confessed Liverpool fan, Sachin Nakrani, and Guardian journo, posted a six year old picture
of a Chelsea fan doing a Nazi salute, suggesting it was taken ahead of today's FA Cup
semi-final.
After several people pointed out to him that the picture was old he acknowledged his mistake.
However, the strange thing about this was not the outdated picture, but that Nakrani would claim to
take such offence after writing lies in The Guardian to defend Luis Suarez.
Following United's game against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge last season, a match report appeared
in the London Evening Standard. The opening paragraphs did not mention the score or the
man of the match or anything to do with the tactics, instead they focussed on our fans' most
popular chant at the time.
Patrick Vieira launched a bizarre attack on Manchester United last week, claiming we must be
desperate to bring Paul Scholes out of retirement and that we wouldn't have lost our young stars,
like Ravel Morrison, in the past. In just the few months since Scholes returned, he's already
scored more goals than he did last season, and Morrison getting shipped off to a Championship club
where he doesn't get a game after we didn't offer him a new contract is hardly "losing out" on our
young players.
Today marks the start of a new feature on Red Rants. Every day, apart from match day, you'll find
an article containing the links to the major stories regarding Manchester United as they appear on
the national newspapers. Disagree with the Mirror? Feel like the Guardian has done a good job? Want
to heap misery [.
You remember our run in with Sachin Nakrani a few months ago. He posted that well known picture
from years ago of a Chelsea fan doing the Nazi salute with his daughter in his arms and claimed
that it was from Chelsea's FA Cup semi-final game against Spurs that day. Nakrani is a Liverpool
fan and obviously had taken offence to Chelsea fans singing "murderers" during the minute's silence
for Hillsborough, and fair enough.
Following penalty misses from Ashley Young and Ashley Cole in England's defeat to Italy at Euro
2012, Twitter was littered with England fans racially abusing them.
All the tweets have been deleted and some users have blocked their accounts but the police are
investigating complaints made.
The FA have today released a statement condemning the behaviour of these fans.
This audio comes from BBC 5Live's 606 phone-in on Saturday evening. Liverpool fan Omar, from
Nottingham, rang up to tell Robbie Savage that he "talks through his a*se". Omar starts off
sounding quite pleasant, giving a nice hello and congratulating opponents West Brom on their win...
but then he snaps.
"Typical!" would have been the exclamations up and down the country this evening, as Danny
Murphy fell to the floor like a sack of shit under a challenge from Michael Carrick. "Typical
United, always getting the decisions!"
If you were curious, only West Brom have conceded more penalties at home this season, but don't
let facts get in the way of a good whinge, eh?
Chelsea fans we've been down in the dumps this week haven't we!. We've had our moans and our rants
and have suffered all week so far knowing that we've reached our lowest point of the season.
So I thought (as I am sitting here at 0235 in the morning) that it's time to put some things into
perspective and try and focus on some good times before the weekend.
"The media's the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that's power. Because they control the minds of the masses." – Malcolm X.
We're witnessing the sort of sanctimonious, manipulative whitewash that occurred after the death of Princess Diana.
The referee from last night's game, Cuneyt Cakir, follows 38 people on Twitter. The vast majority of Turkish football teams and TV stations which is fair enough. But he also follows Cristiano Ronaldo, Real Madrid and their biased newspaper, Marca. Biased? Paid off? There's got to be some explanation for that bent decision to send off Nani last night.
Sir Alex Ferguson has changed my life. Some of the best feelings I've ever experienced are a result of the brilliant teams he has built and the success he has inspired. Whilst I'm not blinded to his mistakes or personal flaws, it is rare that I would publicly criticise him. However, I think the handling of Rio Ferdinand in response to him not wearing a "Kick It Out" t-shirt ahead of Saturday's win over Stoke has been fairly embarrassing for the club.
Better late than never, here's an open thread for today's Olympic soccer game between Great Britain
vs United Arab Emirates (UAE). During or after today's Olympic soccer match, post your rants,
raves, questions and observations in the comments...
Before, during and after today's UEFA Champions League semi-final between Chelsea and Barcelona at
Stamford Bridge, post your rants, raves, questions and commentary in the comments section below.
While yesterday's match between Bayern Munich and...
The linesman flagged for this in the second half but the referee waved play on. No advantage was
gained from waving play on. You won't have seen this on Match of the Day 2 though.
Can you imagine if David de Gea rushed out of the penalty area and handled the ball?
Eggs-asperating Easter for Leeds fans! Twiggster is totally "choc-ed" by the two defeats. Nailed
on we won't get to the play offs now, but your host is hoping for an end of season resurrection,
despite being very cross....
Enough of the puns! Leeds Ladies and the U.18′s bring us the only joys this week but the
listeners' emails were very inspiring this week and Twiggster rants about Bates, the players and
just about everything to do with our club as well as including player and manager interviews.
