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.