From Cork to Toronto

If you were a lad growing up in Argentina you might not have fully appreciated the hatred between Liverpool and Manchester United. You become a decent player and get picked up by United after Valladolid and PSG and show some promise at full back - Old Trafford being partial to an "Argentina!" chant since 1998 - and voted fan player of the year in your first season but have awful luck with injury since... but apparently you never noticed how the fans felt about the bin-dippers, how loudly they sang "Gary Neville is a red, he hates Scousers". You might have remarked on how Ole Gunnar Solskjaer is now 20LEGEND but there's always the niggle that he used to support the dippers as a kid. Sure we took Rooney but Everton were never as much of an irritant as the other shower. Then there was "big time Charlie" Ince who went from United to Liverpool, but via Inter Milan and a two year gap - and nobody's forgotten Charlie's goal at Anfield in 1999, or...

Updated to fix some dead links . For a Celtic and Manchester United supporter, this is a dream combo - "Larsson (Solskjaer 78 mins)" "Goals: Larsson 55, Solskjaer 90" The players who share a song shared the 2-1 win in the FA Cup Third Round - I trust Ole has no problems sharing with a Swede. Pity Martin O'Neill, who managed Larsson for Celtic in the glory days of the Seville UEFA Cup final , who must have feared the worst seeing him in a United shirt to face his new Aston Villa charges. Larsson is due to leave United at the end of his loan period on March 12 when Helsingborg's season begins but the buzz to keep him is merely a reflection of the desperation that sets in when you cut loose a world-class striker and have to deal with being without him. Sadly they did "take my Larsson away" from Celtic and I think it might be best that Henrik has a brief but stellar stay and leaves for Sweden with everyone getting what they originally wanted from...

United Position 1/Played 17/Points 44 Chelski 2/16/38 Liverpool 4/17/28 Arsenal 6/16/26 city 12/17/20 God knows how we're doing it . Fergie is still considering 4-5-1 the SAFE option even though we keep conceding goals! At any other time (well, any time before he left Celtic say) Henrik Larsson would have been hailed as the solution to the fragility of United's front line but we already have Giggs and Solskjaer so we don't need any more aging legends. His reluctance to use 4-4-2 stinks of a threadbare squad and a tightfisted board than tactical nous given the success it generally brings when he is forced into it by another lone striker fiasco. The Ginger Prince's vision was reported to be a lot less than 100% and Giggs is having that kind of great season which usually builds up to a climax of a debilitating injury. Big tests await in 2007, including Arsenal, Liverpool and Chelsea away. That said, I have generally respected Arsenal as opposed to the reflexive disgust...

for the time being anyway . God knows how we're managing it considering the farce of United's summer transfer dealings. 1 Manchester United 12pts 4 Chelski 9pts 9 Liverpool 4pts 10 city 4pts 17 Arsenal 2pts Not everyone is happy , mind. Meanwhile Roy starts his official career with a win , although his Vader-esque presence in the stands produced a win just before he signed the contract. I wonder whether his half-time chat was of the Ferguson Hairdryer (TM) variety. A good hiding of Leeds on Wednesday will make Old Trafford devotees smile all the wider.

Has Eric the King grown tired of beach football and acting? He doesn't say anything, not even gnomic references to trawlers and seagulls.

United Rant has a round up of possible transfer targets if the big names in Italian football face demotion due to the alleged match fixing. Sadly under the Glazer regime we are only likely to be disappointed but it's nice to dream.

Just a quick follow up on a previous post . Remember Rooney's "accidental stamp" which "only got a red card because Ronaldo stuck his interfering head in"? FIFA have taken a different view , and now Rooney will miss the first two England qualifying games for Euro2008.

No, not that "city" , the City of Toronto (though it's equally true of the former). The Star reports that the City's Budget Advisory Committee wants to make the Toronto Zoo charge more for visitors who can't produce ID verifying that they live in the City , so visitors from other parts of the GTA as well as tourists from other parts of Canada or internationally would pay a surcharge of $2 ($21 instead of $19). This wheeze was proposed by Joe Mihevc, who will face former Mayor John Sewell in the upcoming ward election. The City is always moaning that tourist numbers are down but now they come up with this notion which will discourage tourists from visiting once, as will inevitably happen, other City owned attractions are told to do likewise. $12 million dollars is not small change to keep the Zoo going but there's a lot of fat that could be trimmed from City disbursements before you got that far. $2 is not much more to pay but it's the principle - it mak...

This post used to say "Try ul rather than li - might be a bullet point?" which is a lesson to me not to post on comments and post to my blog simultaneously. And it's not like they look similar either... oh well! Bit of a symptom of the weekend really - back to back losses for the Canadian men's hockey team against Switzerland (Tobler0wned?) and Finland, the dawning realisation that unlike a large chunk of "Dallas" I'm not going to suddenly be in a shower and realise that Steve Staunton as Irish soccer manager is all a dream and lastly the crushing defeat at Anfield - not the scale of the result but the significance of it for United's season, for the disaster that is United's playing staff and for Alan Smith's future . I missed it on telly and I'm glad I did because h earing about it was depressing enough . Nice to see that the workshy scouse plague left us with the moral high ground with their "serenade" of Smith though - a...

For all of those who left us that night 48 years ago . One cold and bitter Thursday in Munich, Germany, Eight great football stalwarts conceded victory, Eight men who will never play again who met destruction there, The flowers of English football, the flowers of Manchester

So there's more of us in Toronto... this lad seems very distressed by the events mentioned in this post though...

No thanks to Rogers Digital TV Guide or Friday's Toronto Star, I finally found out United v Liverpool was actually being shown this morning. Sunday's paper finally had it right. After Burton Albion were dispatched during the week by Joe the Yank et al, today Rio Ferdinand decided to make himself useful . Maybe he's figured out finally that with big money comes big responsibility? Why does second place to ChelsKGB seem so dire? It's probably the knowledge of how bad things would be without Mighty Mouth and the Dutch contingent up front and right at the back . It's also a forboding as to how bad things might be for Scholes . It's always cheering to see the Scousers emotionally crushed with a last minute winner (shades of Eric ), but surely a lot of the current squad (Fortune, Silvestre, John O'Shea if he doesn't improve smartly) will be seeking new homes next season, even though one who will surely be dumped should never have to leave, and appa...