WHY SAY ANYTHING?

How can a club like Manchester United not know that one of their star players does not have a visa?

The pre-season tour will already be starting without their new signings Fred and Diogo Dalot. The former because he still has a week off from not playing in the World Cup and the latter because he is recovering from injury.

Most of the rest of the World Cup participants will not be joining the tour at all so it is quite important during these friendly games that alternative tactics and set-ups can be worked on.

Whilst it is true to say that this situation also gives a decent opportunity for some of the youngsters to make the breakthrough the plain fact of the matter is that it doesn’t often happen. Much is said about the chances opening up for the kids but, when the season starts, it’s usually the same old faces in the starting line-up, along with any new signings.

Assuming that Romelu Lukaku, Marcus Rashford and Jesse Lingard aren’t to be considered for the opening game of the season at home to Leicester City, then a front three of Mata, Martial and Sánchez was the planned combination. The fact that the Chilean is training alone at Carrington makes the preparation for this game a little awkward.

(As we are writing news has just reached us that Sánchez’s visa has been sorted out and he can now fly out to join the team in LA).

So back to the original question; how can a club such as Manchester United not know that one of their star players doesn’t have a visa? Surely, when he arrived from Arsenal, this was checked just in case, maybe, United had to fly to America for a pre-season tour at some stage.

Maybe they didn’t know they were going stateside until the last minute when it was too late to get the paperwork in time.

Over the years these things have tended to happen to Manchester United and the common denominator seems to be that all the mishaps have occurred since Ed Woodward took the reins.

David De Gea’s “transfer” to Real Madrid was cancelled because a fax machine, somewhere, didn’t work. This was only three years ago and was well into the post-fax era where electronic mail had long since become the preferred method of communication.

Back then our theory on this debacle was well documented in this article and we have yet to be convinced otherwise.

Marcos Rojo had also managed to get himself stranded in Argentina and was another who was unable to join a pre-season tour on time because he lost his passport! This was in the days of Louis van Gaal but Woodward was still head honcho at the time.

Who is in charge of the administration at Old Trafford? Ed Woodward was in charge of the marketing department before being promoted way above his talent to CEO or whatever title he now holds. He was responsible for bringing money into the club and, in fairness, was very good at it. Now he is the supremo, reporting only to the Glazers, which makes him responsible for everything that happens at the club.

Unfortunately, through many years of experience, we are very aware that American owners are only interested in the bottom line. They don’t particularly care whether or not a person is good at his/her job as long as they are making money.

Manchester United would make money, probably more so than now, if a five-year old was in charge. They certainly wouldn’t waste as much on transfers as they do currently, (Fellaini £4m over the original asking price, Di Maria £19m loss in a year, Falcao a fortune in wages, and the list goes on).

So the club, from an administration and financial point of view, is being totally mismanaged. The problem is that nobody wants to admit it and it will only be brought to light in a major way if they ever stop making such huge amounts of money.

Then just watch how quickly things change at the top.

And finally…..

Gary Neville doesn’t think the FA should sell Wembley. He thinks the money for grass roots football could be raised by placing a levy on agent’s fees which is currently money lost to the game.

He is right about the agents but selling Wembley would still make sense as the FA, from beginning to end with this “new Wembley”, have proven that they haven’t a clue what to do with it.

As a fellow Mancunian, it is quite surprising hearing Neville defending the FA and the national stadium as, like oursleves, he should be fervently against everything being filtered down to London so that any profit can go into already bloated pockets. He doesn’t even like the place.

Still, his idea is a good one and should be put into place whether or not Wembley is sold.