Rugby, Asian laws, foreign pages. What’s going on?

I’LL say one thing for these international hiatuses — they do at least allow such rubber-necking free-loaders as your correspondent to slope off to Paris for a weekend of World Cup rugby and heavy drinking, for which I give my thanks.

We football fans have had to put up with weeks of nauseating moralising from the media about how civilised rugger is compared to football and I could see the point on Saturday night as the entente cordiale flowed thick and fast even after the final whistle: all that mutual backslapping, bonhomie and fair play certainly stirred my emotional response.

“What a sickening bunch of girls,” I concluded.

Alright, I’m being a tad smart — but I cannot wait for Saturday and the resumption of proper sporting hostilities at Villa Park, where the only collapsing scrums will be our lads piling into the World’s Worst Stewards at the foot of the away end when we score. Yes, the men in yellow jackets combined with West Midlands Police tend to make Villa Park a less than welcoming environment but it’s a fantastic stadium, still old-school enough to please us traditionalists and full of folk memories of great United FA cup triumphs past.

Of course, it’s the league this weekend, not the cup, and a decent draw would suffice given that we are the likelier team to be suffering post-international fatigue, and that we can be excused for already looking to keep our batteries fresh for the Champions League next week.

That said, you will allow us the prospect of being excited by whatever Tevez and Rooney choose to display to us, in light of the apparent new awakening of both talents in the last 10 days or so.

There’s a palpable sense at OT that we are about to see the flowering of all Fergie’s dreams for his fantastic forward formation, although knowing him, he’s probably plotting on having a ‘tinker’ for Saturday.

Speaking of ‘what might be’, we at Red Issue learned last week that we might get two Tevezes for the price of one — younger brother Miguel, a very talented teenager — is a secret inductee at our Academy. A gold star for the United Academy; and in the London Sunday Times there was evidence of why that is long overdue.

A rather disturbing piece on Manchester City’s Academy made it clearer than ever that we seem to be losing out on local and regional young talent to the Blues, who have seen 24 graduates make it into their first team.

Even more aggravating, the chap in charge at City is a former United squad member who learned his trade — and imbued his philosophy regarding the cultivation of local youth — from Matt Busby.

Alex Ferguson has, reportedly been grumbling for some time about the breakdown in the talent conveyor belt. Publicly, he blames the FA’s ‘restrictive’ geographical recruitment notes, but you do wonder whether privately he may be pointing the finger at targets somewhat closer to home. Certainly, the glory days of Eric Harnson’s fledglings seem long ago.

And I can suggest to you that it is looking increasingly likely that our two top targets for next summers completion of the team rebuild will be duly signed. Berbatov and Richards’s camps have both leaked indications to Red Issue that their clients ‘know the score’ and are focussed on Old Trafford. Micah possibly signing a new deal at City shortly will make no difference to the end game, although he has privately expressed a deep reluctance to be forced into having to ask for a move. Of course, it could all to horribly wrong should City continue to steam ahead and qualify for the Champions League.

But an asteroid strike is likelier.

Not least as their new owner could be languishing in jail by spring. Yes, the sudden step-up in activity between the Thai justice ministry and the British Government over Thaksin Shinawatra’s case is being widely savoured by Reds who all have their fingers crossed for an election there in December which could greenlight an extradition. Pause for a moment: can you believe football is in such a state that we are perusing the foreign pages of broadsheets, examining the minutative of Asian legal rules and checking out the small print of a 1911 extradition treaty?

But in all seriousness, that is what some of us have been doing this week — and I daresay City fans have done likewise. We’ve come a long way from simply glancing at hamstring updates haven’t we?