The shocking ‘world-class’ reason Manchester United were forced into £15m sale | OneFootball

James Garner was scared away from Manchester United by a 35-year-old Tom Huddlestone, while Alexander Isak has ‘hit back’ at Alan Shearer.

Just 427 weeks to go before club football returns, baby.

Tough love It is difficult to decide who the most earnest England national team beatsman is between Henry Winter and John Cross.

This line from the latter in the Daily Mirror nudges him ahead in the race for now:

Sounds pretty much like Galatasaray in 1993.

Garner support James Garner has been picked for England newspaper interview duty in the build-up to the Spain game, and kindly dropped a headline-friendly line in about how he “wouldn’t have been where I am today” if he had stayed at Manchester United.

The sentence in question:

And the Manchester United midfielders signed in the same summer Garner was sold: Christian Eriksen, Casemiro and Tom Huddlestone.

James Garner thought 35-year-old Tom Huddlestone was so world-class that he felt compelled to leave. Pass it on.

Taking the Michael In other Manchester United news…

Oh bloody hell, Daily Express website. Can a guy not catch a break? What further headache-inducing issue could possibly have befallen Carrick now?

Well Patrick Dorgu would “prefer to have one fixed position” and “feels most natural” at left-back, but ultimately just wants to play and is happy to continue in “the attacking roles” too.

A professional football manager will undeniably be devastated to learn one of his players is willing to play in any position. It’s nothing some paracetamol won’t sort.

Doubters into Balebas The Sun website takes us ‘Inside Carlos Baleba’s first few weeks at Man Utd with Bryan Mbeumo and tight inner circle keeping £70m star grounded,’ which you have to say is remarkably generous of them.

It’s a perfectly fine read, even if it actually reveals precious little about Carlos Baleba’s first few weeks at Man Utd, the majority of which have been spent recovering from an injury.

But two lines do stand out:

It turns out Baleba’s support network has been kept in place on purpose, rather than by pure coincidence.

Alexander the irate It is a proud international break tradition for a player to be interviewed by one of their native outlets, for those quotes to cause a massive stir due to the news vacuum, and for claims of mistranslation to keep that ball rolling.

Alexander Isak will struggle to mount that defence, so basically inconsequential were the words he offered to Swedish website Fotbollskanalen, which have simply been stripped of all context in the hope of pretending he has mugged Alan Shearer entirely off.

A shiny penny for those who can spot the word which has been leapt upon here, in response to a question about Shearer saying he (and pretty much everyone) wanted Isak to take the penalty against Newcastle last month:

Congratulations to the eagle-eyed amongst you who latched onto “irrelevant”; you can now do freelance work for these shameless British newspaper websites:

‘Isak hits back at ‘irrelevant’ Newcastle icon Alan Shearer’s criticism’ – The Sun website.

‘Alexander Isak fires back at Newcastle icon Alan Shearer – ‘A bit irrelevant” – Daily Mirror website.

‘Alexander Isak slams ‘irrelevant’ Alan Shearer and gives truth about Newcastle United fan abuse’ – The Chronicle.

Not sure it even qualifies as a response, never mind a ‘hit’/’fire back’ or ‘slam’.

Klopp a load of that It has been a while since Jurgen Klopp’s hue could be accurately identified beyond ‘Red Bull’, so these stories are more than welcome:

‘Jurgen Klopp shows true colours in Liverpool reunion with Virgil van Dijk and Cody Gakpo’ – Liverpool Echo.

‘Jurgen Klopp shows true colours as gesture towards two Liverpool players caught on camera’ – Daily Express website.

‘Gesture towards two Liverpool players caught on camera’ definitely accidentally makes it sound like Klopp was doing a ‘w*nker’ sign to Jeremie Frimpong and Ryan Gravenberch from the touchline, rather than giving true-colour-betraying hugs to Virgil van Dijk and Cody Gakpo.

Make way for hobbies The Sun website clearly hit some international break gold with their coverage of Phil Foden’s bizarre, eccentric, peculiar hobby of… *checks notes*…fishing? Is that right? Never heard of it.

Why stop at one entirely alien footballer pastime when there is a good feature to be written about a load of them?

Apparently Eberechi Eze loves something called ‘chess’. Must be a TikBook trend or something.