Sparky to light Old Trafford flame?

THERE was a mild kerfuffle when the entire England cricket team were given MBEs by The Queen for winning The Ashes last year; commentators sniffed along the lines of ‘they hadn’t quite earned it yet, baby’.

Watching their footballing equivalents blunder about in Tel Aviv over the weekend, I think we can rest assured that no such controversy will be invoked by McClaren’s boys for some considerable time to come. Not unless it’s for ‘services to comedy’ anyway.

Wayne Rooney seemed to encapsulate the entire episode with his complete inability to inflict any damage on Ben Haim, a player he had destroyed days earlier when wearing a United shirt. Ingerlund-phobic Reds such as myself chuckled: long may such gross disparities continue.

The weekend-off was hugely welcome, given that Old Trafford’s treatment rooms contain several inhabitants who could do with the extra recovery time. Not least as the notoriously bruising Blackburn are the next opponents, with manager Sparky doubtless keen to prove a point. You may recall that Gary Neville took a rare step out of line recently in suggesting that Hughesy would be a favoured successor to Fergie as boss, an apparent lèse-majesté that earned him a public rebuke from Alex’s chatty pal Bobby Robson in the Mail On Sunday.

Yet that same week, Ryan Giggs made exactly the same Hughesy recommendation in a meeting with fans and it is said that other older players in the squad feel the same way. Fergie himself, in an apparent riposte, took the opportunity a week later to talk up the prospects of Carlos The Jackass instead, a candidate hitherto largely dismissed from the running on account of his contractual limbo and, more pertinently, his supposed political ‘defeat’ this season over issues such as 4-5-1 and general playing style.

Yes, the succession question has not gone away, despite being understandably granted less attention in the wake of Fergie’s triumphant resurrection this year. You suspect that more than a few inside O.T. share Eric Djemba-Djemba’s recently expressed suspicion that Fergie will quit at the top if he wins the title come May. Of course the boss himself is promising at least two more years, although surely even this notoriously reluctant stage-leaver would see a European Cup victory as an irresistible exit cue.

The mutterers reckon that Fergie wouldn’t want Hughes to succeed him, as the pair had an infamously spikey relationship, culminating in an allegedly epic confrontation at Upton Park on that bitter title-deciding day in May 1995. Then again, Hughes was spikey with ALL his managers, so maybe one shouldn’t read too much into such considerations. In any event, it strikes me that Mark’s succession odds are unrealistically long and that he might be worth a flutter, no matter what the result of his shop window display of managerial skill this coming weekend.

The Ronaldo contract situation apart, I would be tempted to conclude today that there’s not a cloud on our new spring horizon. But that wouldn’t be my oyster-grit style, of course, so instead I will bring to your attention a story in the magazine ‘United We Stand’ this week that one of the most incredible and notorious Old Trafford sex scandals may be about to burst forth publicly, three years after the incidents in question began.

The female involved — according to UWS, whose editor Andy Mitten is nephew of United legend Charlie and a highly-respected newspaper reporter — is allegedly in talks with tabloids about spilling the grisly beans, having now left her husband. If it breaks, the football impact could be significant, assuming the ‘wronged’ employee reacts in the expected manner.

Good old O.T: never a dull moment, eh?

Richard Kurt, whose ‘Red Army Years’ will be re-published in May.