£80 Million you say? Sweet!

Rudyard Kipling once wrote a poem. You might have heard of it. It is called, quite simply, “If”.

The opening verse is basically this:-

“If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating.”

And ends thus:-

“Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And–which is more–you’ll be a Man, my son!”

According to some, with the loss of Ronaldo and Tevez, the world is about to implode as far as Manchester United are concerned.

We can never replace them. Between Ronaldo’s preening and Tevez’s headless chicken impersonations, they managed to fit in about 40 goals between them yada yada yada.

And where was Sir Alex when all around him were losing their heads?

Chilling on a beach in the South of France, catching some rays, sipping on a cold one, no doubt doing a spot of bird-watching when the missus was having forty-winks.

His holiday is now over and things will get moving now that he is back, fully recharged. He has never really been one to go berserk in the transfer market during the summer. His quick-fire spending spree a couple of years ago when he brought in Nani, Anderson, Hargreaves and Tevez (the latter two admittedly took a bit more wrangling) was the exception, rather than the rule and took everyone by surprise.

Targets will have been identified months ago. Manchester United don’t sell anyone without a clear idea of who is going to replace them and in the cases of Tevez and Ronaldo, neither departure will have come as a major surprise to Sir Alex.

There’s around seven weeks until the start of the new season but we start our pre-season matches in around 4 weeks time and I am almost certain that at least two new faces will be introduced before we head out to the Far East.

More may well come on board and one or two may well depart but this will have all been decided months ago.

While the press are all regurgitating the same old names, it would not come as a major surprise to me if Sir Alex, whose network of scouts extends beyond the local boozer, brings in at least one player who is merely greeted with, “Who?!” (Solskjaer) or, “Well, I didn’t see that one coming!” (Cantona).

These golden nuggets out of left-field have been the hallmark of Fergie’s reign at Old Trafford and it wouldn’t surprise me to see him side by side with another OT Legend-in-the-Making before the month is out and it WON’T be a name that the press have even mentioned.

That’s why us mere mortals write about what he may or may not do whilst he actually goes out and DOES it… year in, year out – as well as, if not better than, anyone else.

Keep the faith!