Sunday, May 21, 2006

United Closes in on Kerlon Moura

Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson is reportedly closing in on a £6million deal for young Brazilian sensation Kerlon Moura Souza.The Reds are desperate to boost their squad in a bid to challenge Chelsea for the Premiership title next season.

And they see the 18-year-old Cruzeiro attacking starlet as the perfect man to add star quality to their ranks.

According to The Times, a United delegation flew to South America this week to meet officials from the club.

And they are hopeful of signing the man dubbed "the new Ronaldinho" in the next few days.


Oh man I've seen clips of this boy sometime back and boy was I impressed. Work permit's going to be a problem getting him to play for us though. Here's a glimpse of what's in store if we do get him. Enjoy.

Monday, May 15, 2006

The FA Cup (Liverpool 3 - West Ham 3)

The result was disappointing at best, however the game was one of the most exciting FA Cup finals in a long time. Ok, last year's one was pretty damn exciting too. Both ended up settled by penalties. Unfortunately, in both cup finals the more deserving team did not win.

At least this one had goals. The normally water-tight Liverpool defense was actually breached 3 times this game. And if not for Steven Gerald, Liverpool should have lost handsomely. He's definitely, without doubt, the best midfielder in the world....by a huge margin.

Of course luck played a huge part in Liverpool's victory, however when you keep doing that in cup finals (3-0 down against AC Milan), something in me tells me that that's no longer luck. In the game of football, you manufacture your own luck, and Liverpool in the past few seasons have been doing that, and it's beginning to become a worrying trend for this Manchester United fan.

Once again, I'm really glad for the presence of Chelsea, and especially so after this cup final. At the rate Liverpool is 'lucking' it out, it's just a matter of time before they win the Premiership. What's even more worrying is that their youth team is really good. I've caught clips of the youth FA cup footage and have been geniunely impressed with the way they play. Their passing reminds me of the old early 80s Liverpool team. If these group of youngster make their way to the first team in the near future, it's going to be really worrying for the rest of the Premiership contenders.

I'm probably sticking my neck out, but there are a couple of youngsters that look particularly impressive.

Nick Anderson (Liverpool) and Daniel Sturridge (Man City). Sturridge especially impressed me alot. He's only 16 years old and looks abit on the raw side, however he has the potential to be one of the best strikers I've seen in a long long time. Too bad he's playing for the City youth team, hardly any chance of him making his way to us.

Tuesday, May 09, 2006

Ending on a High Note (Manchester United 4 - Charlton 0)

I had quite a torrid time torrenting the game. Took almost 36hrs to find the torrent and download it, but it was well worth it.

To be frank, the scoreline flattered Charlton. We were dominant and we did it without Rooney or Ruud. Had it not been for an absolutely brilliant performance from the Charlton keeper, we might have really stomped them on Alan Curbishley's last game in charge.

Richardson in particular impressed me the most this game. He not only played well, but he played smart as well. Ronaldo was a close second. The difference between them was that Richardson was able to deliver the ball to where the players in front of him wanted, while Ronaldo's final delivery was somewhat lacking. When and if Ronaldo polishes up that part of the game in a couple of years (hopefully), he would be the difference maker in the team.

While Richardson had an awesome game, his consistency still worries me. He has shown that he has the determination and the passion to play for this club, but his performance this season has been inconsistent. Until he finds that consistency and performs in every game, he'd still be a fringe player. To be fair to Richardson, his appearance has been inconsistent as well, but this is the typical chicken and egg scenerio.

It was also great to see Schole and OGS (Solskjaer) get decent playing time. Scholes looked like he's been playing all this while and hasn't missed a beat. OGS, on the other hand, looked rusty. In the time that he was in the game, I hardly saw him. The truth was we probably didn't need him to do much either. The game was already sewn up by then.

What was heartening to see in this game was how we looked on defense. Everytime Charlton had the ball, we always had players back defending. It was a very hardworking display. We hardly gave Charlton a sniff at goal, even when we were 4-0 up. It was a comprehensive victory at both ends of the pitch. And we also showed that we are able to cope without key players like Rooney or Ruud.

And on the subject of Ruud, all signs seem to point to an exit. I suspect the writing has been on the wall since our exit from the Champions League. He didn't deliver in those 6 games in the group stages and we all know how ruthless Fergie is when players fall out of his favour. I, for one, will miss Ruud next season if he leaves. He would be a hard act to follow, and judging from the talent we have, it looks to me we're going back to scoring by community instead of having a one man goal machine.

Wednesday, May 03, 2006

Life Without Rooney - Part II

I finally downloaded the game and it was refreshing to have English commentary for once. The comms were from Martin Tyler and old hero Gordon McQueen. I was pretty amused with them when they constantly talked about penetration and protection.

Anyway, on to the game. It was disappointing. My views from the previous entry were mostly spot on. Ruud and Saha had no chemistry whatsoever. In fact until the introduction of Ronaldo in the second half, we were the second best team on the pitch. We didn't even look like scoring until that penalty came along. After that, there was a brief moment of sustained pressure from our lads, but didn't produce anything.

How and why Evra started was personally a mystery to me. He was as usual, totally useless. Good thing he played on the wings with Silves at left back, where he couldn't do much damage. Giggs as mentioned, was disgraceful. No way he plays in midfield, ever. Saha and Ruud were disappointing, especially Saha.

Players who didn't disgrace themselves : Park, Neville, Ronaldo and EVS. Everyone else, pretty darn poor in one way or another.

In conclusion, we missed Rooney badly. In fact we missed him in the worst way possible. It's something we have to do during the summer. Rooney can't and wouldn't play every game next season. That means for some games, we are going to look as crap as this. If we can't find any chemistry without him, then we're in serious trouble. I'm frankly surprised how much and how far we have come to depend on an individual. Hopefully this is only a one game incident and we'd pick ourselves up in the next one against Charlton.

But let's not discredit Boro. McClaren has built a pretty nice team. The youngsters coming up look good. The team itself played well, and has been producing pretty incredible results in Europe. I'm personally rooting for them to lift the UEFA Cup.

SouthPark
In case anyone wants to download current SP episodes, you can do so at the following websites.

Mr Twig (Torrents)
CartmanLand (Direct Downloads)

Election Fever
This is for Chia who is stuck in HK. I hope you're not reading our right wing media for coverage on the election. I've provided a few links just especially for your viewing pleasure.

Yawning Bread
The Void Deck
SG Election Videos
SG Rally

The last one in particular is pretty good, filled with links on other election sites.

The coverage over the net is superb, giving alternative views and groundlevel experiences, something sorely lacking in our right-wing media. There's a quiet revolution going on over the net and people generally are unhappy with the modus operandi of the PAP. Maybe, just maybe we can get the voices we need in the government this time round. I'm not keeping my hopes too high though, Cheng San still lingers sorely in my mind.

Tuesday, May 02, 2006

Life Without Rooney - Part I (Manchester United 0 - Boro 0)

I only caught the last 15 mins of the game. My channel list got pretty fucked up. The channels that were supposed to screen the game weren't and only after trying all the unknown channels, I finally got one which screened it, leaving me with 15 mins.

Anyway I'll write down my thoughts for those 15 mins and do another entry after I've watched the rest of the game, when and if I can torrent it over the net.

For whatever short time I caught the game, we missed Rooney.....badly. There was no inventiveness, endeavour, strength or passion in our game. Ronaldo did what he could, and the short impression when Rossi came on provided that little bit of imagination. Surprisingly Silves and Gary Neville did well on the wings. Other than that, it was negative all around.

I heard Ruud missed a penalty earlier in the game. He looked horrible the entire 15 mins and worse during the 4 added ones. He looked like he didn't have confidence and it showed thru his play.

Richardson was absolutely abysmal. I have no idea what he is doing on the pitch. He can't shoot, can't dribble, can't pass and yet he tried to do all three, failing miserably on all.

Giggs was the usual ineffective midfielder, giving the ball away, although he showed plenty of industry trying to win the ball back. He certainly gave JOS plenty of work to do.

If we play like this on Sat against Charlton, we're going to draw another game and probably concede 2nd place to Liverpool. Probably the only good thing out of the Rooney injury is that he's not going to play for England. Hopefully he'd be fully rested and fit for next season.

Blog Archive