Rio for Technical Director & Transfers Galore

Ok....so we were in need of a laugh this morning when greeted by headlines suggesting that former United defender Rio Ferdinand was on a shortlist of candidates to be the new Technical Director at the club.

Now, Ferdinand was a key part of the Ferguson era, a rock solid defender with good footballing skills, and he's not stupid either. But the kinds of footballing smarts and intelligence we need in this role is something that Ferdinand cannot provide in my opinion.

It turns out Mike Phelan is no longer being considered and is not on the shortlist. The obvious candidate is Edwin Van Der Sar, who, as someone currently in the same role at Ajax, could bring a list of players with him at prices affordable to the club, which is in need of root and branch reform this summer.

In other news, Romelu Lukaku has said he may go during the summer, if the club doesn't secure Champion's League qualification.

What's frustrating about this is that if the £75 million striker, Pobga, De Gea and others had shown the right level of commitment in the past few months, they could have helped United to qualify, rather then throwing away chance after chance for us to make the top 4. As it turns out, they all seem to be off - De Gea to PSG, and Pogba to Real or back to Juventus.

If these transfers go through, it should bring a lot of money into the kitty and help us to target some interesting replacements. The likes of Erikson at Spurs and Jan Oblak, the current keeper at Athletico Madrid. Getting the latter would involve invoking the whopping 120 million Euro clause in Oblak's contract - the player is frustrated and wants his club to do more to close the gap on league leaders Barcelona.

With all this going on, we feel like things could get really eventful at United during the transfer window. And while it's sad that excellent players like De Gea appear to want to leave, what we want to see from the board is the desire to make the right investment, both in terms of amount, but also in terms of the right personnel.

There have been too many panic buys and poor decisions from Ed Woodward, who is after all an accountant and not a football man. David Gill, for all his faults, was at least competent and running the finances and supporting good buying decisions at the club. The last thing we want is for an ageing, overpriced, easily injured player like Gareth Bale to rock up at United and claim a huge salary.

Pogba can Do One to Real....but where does it leave us?

It will come as no surprise to Man Utd fans that Paul Pogba is currently considering a move to Madrid.

The part timer, who was dragged over the coals last week by Roy Keane who called him a 'bluffer' who would throw Ole 'Under the Bus' is said to be on  his way to Real Madrid in a deal with 150 million Euros.

Keane was in a Sky Sports post game analysis after the 4-0 drubbing at Everton last weekend and said:

‘I wouldn’t believe a word he says. No meaning behind it. I don’t even think he believed what he was saying there. ‘He’s on about being a teammate, well if you’re going to be a good teammate you’ve got to run back, you’ve got run back when you’re defending. He said it got a bit heated after the Everton game, I heard they were actually throwing hair gel at each other it got that heated'.

Things are different now than they were in the late 90s, but it seems that Pogba is more interested in his haircut and social media following than in actually making an effort.

Unfortunately his bad attitude is infectious. It seems to be poisoning De Gea, who has made as many mistakes in the last 3 games as he did in the previous 123.

Even Martial has been pictured with his arms behind his back in training.

The problem is that drawing against Chelsea on Sunday when we could and should have won a game that was there for the taking is that top 4 now looks beyond us.

And I know some people seem to think we'd be better off without Champion's League football, but the reality is attracting talent to replace the talent it looks like we're going to lose is going to be very hard once we're out of that competition, as Gary Neville has come out and said after the game yesterday.

Things certainly aren't looking good right now.