Ronaldo's Timing, Anything But Right

(Photo by Claudio Villa/Getty Images)

Much to the relief of us all, the worlds most tedious transfer has finally been completed, Ronaldo has got his dream and ahh so have the Glazers.  As the news broke on Thursday morning, United where first out of the blocks with what seemed like a fairly routine statement.  However upon closer analysis it was anything but routine.  The undisputed conclusion was that United laid the finger of blame fairly and squarely at the feet of Ronaldo for once again "wanting to leave", how convenient.  Look a little closer, in the last two weeks Manchester United have completed a record sponsorship deal with AON, they have agreed fees to the tune of 14 million pounds for Frazier Campbell, Manucho, Danny Simpson and Darren Gibson all in the month of June.  The timing is a little more than coincidence, Uniteds financial year closes June 30th, hence the deadline given to Madrid, basically speaking, unless United show strong financial returns for 2008-09 then no chance of refinancing and no chance of continued leverage from the bank.

This footballing institution where always just a recession away from meltdown.  The leveraged debt was labelled unrealistically aggressive even in a time when finance was facil.  Financing that was only granted as a result of Uniteds extraordinary assets, of course once meltdown happens then bye bye assets.  Now i'm not blaming the Glazer's for Ronaldo's departure but to conveniently hold the winger solely responsible and claim it was a football decision is just ridiculous.  If truth be told, the one thing United should be grateful for is that Ronaldo desperately wanted this move.  Which brings us to the watershed pre season for Manchester United and its fans.  This is the pre season when the true extent of Uniteds hardship will be revealed.  If come August 31st, the Red Devils do not have 3 or 4 top class additions to their squad then if i was United fan i would be worried, very worried.  This team needs a top class Right Back, a Defensive Midfielder to solve the Hargreaves mess, a Creative Midfielder other than Michael Carrick who has created a mere 5 premiership goals all season, a Left Midfielder so the best English Talent in 20 years isn't transformed into a versatile journeyman and a Striker that has pace which United will sorely lack with the exit of Ronaldo. 

No doubt about it, United signed a pre contract agreement with Madrid last summer, they would have known this cash was coming and no doubt decided that this would be used to do the business that they need but theres one big problem that didnt exist when United signed this contract, they didn't plan on other clubs being flush and competing for the same few world class players out there.  They never imagined Manchester City would create expensive conundrums in the Market, they drove the Berbatov deal up and left Jorabchian sitting pretty with Tevez, Milan after the Kaka sale are out to appease their supporters and Roman Abramovich has got the bug again.  Its time now for the Glazers to fulfill their promise, Madrid have proved that everyone is available they just cost more than excuses and if United want a return back to the Champions League summit in 12 months time, then all of that 80 Million plus a little more will be needed to breath life into this symphony that have lost their conductor.

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