Can we just bury our heads in the sand over yesterday’s result, please? It’s just more of the same and one really doesn’t want another post of whinging and “if onlys“. Suffice it to say that our best players were our old ones, Scholesy and Giggsy, that Phil, the player we let go for a song, showed Smithy how one should play the midfield anchor role and that Van der Sar hardly covered himself in glory. The one bright spot? That the decision to play Ji-Sung Park shows how much better a team we are with him in the team- for example the way he brings in the opposition fullback and gives the room for Gary to do his stuff.

Depressing…what more can one say? Only that if we had been Chelsea, John Terry would have headed home from a corner in the last minute of injury time.

So WHO are we going to buy to help us out of the doldrums? Your comments much appreciated. One website, Football Rumours is full of ideas:

OUT:

O’Shea (Birmingham-3.5M)

Miller (Leeds-300k)

Fletcher (Aston Villa-4M)

Saha (Auxerre-3M)

Ebanks Blake (Leeds-700k)

Solskjaer (Malmo FF-free)

Steele (Colchester-100k)

Fortune (Charlton-1M)

Cooper (Stoke-free)

IN:

Barreto (NEC Nijmegen-2M)

Ambrosini (AC Milan-5M)

Vermooten (Leeds-loan)

Pienaar (Ajax-4M)

Huntelaar (Heerenveen-7M)

Hart (Shrewsbury-1M)

Hargreaves (Bayern Munich-7M)

Other names mentioned: Joaquin for 12M from Real Betis, Freddie Adu and Theo Walcott, who United would loan stright back to Southampton until the end of the season. Also that MU have reached a “gentleman’s agreement” with Gattuso for an end-of-season move.

Sir Alex Ferguson will also stay at the club as manager.

Phew! Of course 90% of the above is complete and utter nonsense, but there is no doubt that we MUST become busy in the January transfer market. Rossi looks an excellent prospect to take over from RVN long-term, so I’m not sure we need to be spending money in that department. On the wings we’re looking good with Park and Giggsy coming back from injury. So it’s back to the old chesnut of midfield again. If the rumours are true about Keano going to Real Madrid, as the BBC is reporting, then a serious opportunity to grab Thomas Gravesen must be on the cards, completing the circle and reuniting him with former teammate Wayne Rooney.

Certainly, Real Madrid are not denying the rumours:

“Roy is on a list of possible signings we are discussing,” said comunications chief Antonio Garcia Ferreras.

After all is said and done, confidence is what we are lacking at the moment. To be fair, our score tally at this stage of the season is perfectly acceptable for a normal season pre-Abramovich. What we need is some confidence and then a “run of form“. We can only hope that in the meantime, for the first time since Mourinho took over, Chelsea start slipping up and losing a bit of momentum and confidence themselves,