United Road Take Me Home

Screenwriter William Goldman might have scripted timeless classics such as ‘Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’ and ‘All the President’s Men’, but the words he’ll probably be remembered for more than any others come from his memoir ‘Adventures in the Screentrade’. There he wrote ‘No one knows anything.’  He might have been talking about film, but his words apply equally well to many other fields, from politics to music. And, of course, to football. Never more so than now, in the dog days of the close season, when transfer speculations rushes in to fill the void left by actual stuff happening.

Anything great in film (and many things far from great) deserve a sequel, and Goldman’s maxim definitely gets one when it comes to transfer speculation; no-one knows anything, but everyone thinks they know something. So depending which paper you read, which internet source you put your trust in, or whether the Glazer’s have done enough this summer to dispel doubts that United will never again be a major force when it comes to recruiting world-renowned talent, David Gill is right now speeding across Milan to sign up Wesley Sneijder. Alternatively Fergie and Gill, with the collusion of obliging hacks, have simply allowed such talk to flare to fan sluggish season-ticket sales.

In the light of recent revelations, journalistic reputation is already a pretty debased currency, but it’s weird to see so many willing to stake their names on such directly contradictory outcomes. Even weirder is the absolute authority and conviction with which they state their claims. I’m not talking here of the massed ranks of forumistas and tweeters eager to inflate their status as in the know merchants. I’m talking about those with picture bylines, the kind who come the new season will be angling for Sunday morning invites round Brian Woolnough’s gaffe for plastic croissants and warm orange juice (strictly ‘from concentrate’).

Who’s briefing who? And what are their motives? One day the BBC’s Howard Nurse is claiming that a ‘reliable’ OT source (reliable, like ‘informed’ being one of those adjectives that has come untethered from its actual meaning) that United were never in for Sneijder and that Gill was never even in Milan. This last point being a reference to the apex (one hopes) of silly-season idiocy when Gill began to trend on twitter as rumour of his location swept the web. The next day, the Guardian still go with a piece of where Sneijder will fit into the tactical scheme of things, while the M.E.N. , pinning the location of the meeting to Zurich, reckon the deal is still very much alive.

Who to believe? Definitely not Fergie himself who has made a career out of dissembling to the press. Whether he observes the whole sorry charade with mirth or with despair is open to debate. I’d guess a mixture of the two. But I couldn’t say for certain. Like everyone, when it comes down to it, I know nothing.