Owen Hargreaves has been named in Manchester United’s 25-man Champions League squad, as has new signing Obertan and plenty of youngsters, but there is no place for Zoran Tosic.

The Serbian winger featured heavily in our pre-season but hasn’t played for United since the friendly against Valencia at Old Trafford at the beginning of August.


1.Van der Sar, 2.Neville, 3.Evra, 4.Hargreaves, 5.Ferdinand, 6.Brown, 7.Owen, 9.Berbatov, 10.Rooney, 11.Giggs, 12.Foster, 13.Park, 15.Vidic, 16.Carrick, 17.Nani, 18.Scholes, 20.Fabio, 21.Rafael, 22.O’Shea, 24.Fletcher, 25.Valencia, 26.Obertan, 27.Macheda, 28.Gibson, 29.Kuszczak.

Additional players registered (UEFA rules permit any player born on or after 1 January 1988 who has been eligible to play for the club for any uninterrupted period of two years since his 15th birthday to be registered outside of the 25-man squad limit): 8.Anderson, 19.Welbeck, 23.J.Evans, 31.C.Evans, 33.Hewson, 36.Gray, 37.Cathcart, 38.Zieler, 39.Chester, 40.Amos

Oh great, it’s international week. Wake me up when it’s over. Sir Alex Ferguson reckons he likes to see our players representing their country though and reckons England will be going out for the win so that they can secure their qualification in to the World Cup, after missing out on last summer’s European Championships.


“It’s important that the players represent their countries and we want them to do well,” said Ferguson. “When they are competitive matches we don’t have any complaints because every player at our club is conscious of the fact that they have important games coming up.”

Ferguson is clued up on who is playing where and how many points they need, but believes England have nothing to worry about.

“England are in a safe situation but still need those three points just to get over the line,” he added. “Therefore, they will want to win. Most of the other sides need to win their games. Patrice Evra is with France, and Nani is with Portugal and they both need to win their games.”

Carrington will be pretty much empty, given the number of internationals we have in the squad, but Ferguson joked that Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes and Gary Neville “will hold the fort while everyone else is away.”

Patrice Evra is enjoying a good start to the season so far and was one of the few players who put in a good 90 minutes against Arsenal last weekend.

He says he isn’t thinking about being the best left-back in the world, rather what he can do to improve on his performances and form.


“I always think more can be done because I always want to develop,” said Evra. “I’m happy when people praise me but I love to work hard and I want to get even better. I always say the most difficult part of being a footballer isn’t making it to the top, it’s about staying at the top and making those tiny improvements that help you stand out from the rest. I’m happy with my current form but I know I can do better. I don’t think about trying to be the best left back in the world – I just think about improving all the parts of my own game and being better than Patrice Evra was a year ago.”

TalkSport ran a poll to see who the Premiership’s all-time biggest diver was. Cristiano Ronaldo, who is talked of a lot more fondly in the media now that he has left us, finished an impressive fourth, way behind Steven Gerrard!


Jürgen Klinsmann - 35%
Steven Gerrard - 29%
Didier Drogba - 18%
Cristiano Ronaldo -12%
David Ginola - 6%

The Sun today has an ‘exclusive’ which claims Rio Ferdinand is thinking about a move to Barcelona or Real Madrid.

“Rio can see the sense of it,” said ‘a source’. “Not only would it be a fresh challenge as he nears the end of his career, it would also fit all his projects off the pitch. Rio has big business plans, which are already taking shape, and would really take off if he moved to one of the big Spanish clubs.”