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The
Devil's Advocate "REDitorial"
commentary by Alex Paylor "RED
sky at night UNITED delight!"
MUFC.SIMPLENET. COM: DAILY NEWS
Date: Sat Aug 01 GMT+05:00 1998
Mail: mufc@netlane.com
PRE SEASON - FIRST TEAM CALENDER
July 25 Birmingham City (A) result: L 3-4
27 Valerengen (A) (Oslo) result: D 2-2
31 Brondby (A) (Copenhagen) result: W 6-0
Aug 4 Brann Bergen (A)
9 Charity Shield at Wembley
18 Eric Cantona XI (H) - Munich testimonial
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United Cruise To Victory
United easily overcame the Danish champions Brondby by 6-0 in Copenhagen.
Teddy Sheringham opened the scoring in an impressive display, but it was
debutant Jaap Staam who caught the eye with a top class performance.
Staam was involved in the first goal when he laid the ball on for Sheringham
to lift it over the keeper.
Paul Scholes made it 2-0 four minutes before half time after good work from
Sheringham and Ole Gunnar Solksjaer.
David Beckham made his first telling contribution on 64 minutes with an
interception which led to Andy Cole's first of the night.
It was 4-0 when Sheringham finished from 18 yards and Cole followed suit
with a double strike from six yards after a fine flowing move.
The rout was complete in injury time with Giggs supplying a cross to the far
post, whcih was met by Jordi Cruyff.
© MLVG 98
Brøndby - Manchester United 0-6 (0-2)
Teddy Sheringham (34. og 71. minut), Paul Scholes (41.), Andy Cole (65. og 84.)
samt Jordi Cruyff (90.) scorede.
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United seek pay deal to land Kluivert
BY MATT DICKINSON
MANCHESTER United completed the easy part of their attempted signing of
Patrick Kluivert yesterday when they agreed a £9 million fee with AC Milan.
The hard part comes early next week, when they must persuade the Holland
striker to forfeit at least £10,000 a week in wages and accept a maximum
salary of £1.2 million. That will be United's first, and last, offer.
It is the same wage that remains on the table for Dwight Yorke, the Aston
Villa striker, who remains a target at Old Trafford, even if the Kluivert
deal goes through. Indeed, the chances of the Yorke transfer are now,
strangely, greater.
United sources indicated yesterday that they believe the publicising of
their interest in Kluivert, 22, may concentrate the minds of the Villa
directors, who have, until now, been demanding an unrealistic £16 million
for Yorke. The thought that they may now miss out completely on a deal that
would involve a swap with Andy Cole and money may persuade Villa to
reconsider.
That strategy by United appeared to have been confirmed yesterday by Martin
Edwards, the United chairman, who said that the offer for Kluivert had been
accepted by Milan. "It doesn't mean our interest in Dwight Yorke has
dropped, because it hasn't," Edwards said. "We can be a bit more relaxed
about the Yorke situation now."
The prospect of Yorke and Kluivert leading the United attack, particularly
in the European Cup Champions' League, is an enthralling one, given that the
FA Carling Premiership club has been struggling in vain to lure a striker to
Old Trafford for more than a year.
Most of the setbacks have related to their rigid pay scale and it will be a
hurdle to the Kluivert transfer when talks with the player begin early next
week after he returns from holiday in the Caribbean. Having moved to Milan
from Ajax 12 months ago on a free transfer under the Bosman ruling, Kluivert
is believed to earn at least £30,000 a week, with the Italian club making
the arrangements for tax deductions.
The highest-paid players at Old Trafford - Roy Keane, Peter Schmeichel, Ryan
Giggs and Teddy Sheringham - are on a maximum of around £23,000 a week gross
and the board of the plc remains fixed in its belief that it will not go
higher.
The pressures on United to drop that stance are immense. Marcel Desailly is
taking home an annual salary of £1.8 million with Chelsea (more than £34,000
a week) and Liverpool offered the France defender an even more lucrative
deal. United refuse to compete with those wages, but believe that their
stature and recent record of success is a key factor in tempting players to
join the club.
They are also hoping that Milan's eagerness to remove Kluivert from their
wage bill could ease negotiations. He was awarded a substantial signing-on
fee when he joined, with the payments staggered over his contract. United
are confident that Milan, who will be making a £9 million profit on a player
that they signed for nothing, will pay a proportion of that money to
facilitate the deal.
If the transfer does go through, it will not be in time for the Champions'
League qualifying match against LKS Lodz, of Poland, next month, as the
deadline for eligible signings is today. Clubs have until August 20 to
register players for the group stages of the competition.
Alex Ferguson, the United manager, would not be drawn on the potential
transfers yesterday. He is with his team on a tour of Denmark and Norway,
but he had suggested previously that the club would not be pursuing Kluivert
and appeared to be unwavering in his determination to sign Yorke.
There have also been reservations voiced within Old Trafford about
Kluivert's unsavoury past, which includes a spell of community service for
his part in a fatal car crash. He was also sent off in Holland's first World
Cup match against Belgium after an opponent taunted him about rape
allegations that were dropped by Dutch police after preliminary inquiries.
Christian Gross, the Tottenham Hotspur coach, yesterday
MLVG
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Dutch ace would be just right for Dwight
By Paul Hince
ALEX FERGUSON is on the verge of purchasing one half of his ``dream ticket''
with the £9m signing of Dutch striker Patrick Kluivert.
And the imminent arrival of Kluivert at Old Trafford will make the
Manchester United manager even more determined to assemble a striking
combination capable of taking the Premiership - and Europe - by storm this
season.
For the Reds boss is convinced that a partnership of Kluivert and Aston
Villa's Dwight Yorke will give him a strike force which will not only
terrify the rest of the Premiership but one with the power and the potency
to launch a successful bid to bring the European Cup back to Old Trafford.
Manchester United's fans will know after watching the World Cup finals why
Ferguson has doggedly remained on Kluivert's trail for two long years.
Even before he had heard the name Patrick Kluivert he knew that sooner or
later, and preferably sooner, he would have to find a new target man to
replace warhorse Mark Hughes whose magnificent career at Old Trafford was
drawing to a close.
In a pre-season tournament at Nottingham Forest's City Ground in the summer
of 1995, Ferguson first laid eyes on the player he believed would prove an
ideal replacement for Hughes - the raw teenaged Kluivert who was already
holding down a regular first-team berth with Dutch giants Ajax.
It was during the season which followed that Ferguson made his first attempt
to sign the young Dutchman who was to display his pedigree on the
international stage for Holland during Euro 96.
Ajax were willing to let Kluivert join the Reds at the right price. But that
move collapsed when the striker was banned from leaving Holland for 12
months as part of the sentence he received after being found guilty of a
serious driving offence.
By the time Kluivert had completed his sentence, United's need for a new
striker appeared to have receded. Eric Cantona was scoring goals on a
regular basis, Andy Cole was at last showing flashes of his old Newcastle
United form and a fresh-faced Ole Gunnar Solskjaer was already building his
own army of admirers at Old Trafford.
With that abundance of talent at his disposal, Ferguson decided he had no
need to join in the chase when Ajax announced last summer that Kluivert was
up for sale, with the Dutch star eventually deciding to take his chance in
Italy's Serie A with a £5m move to AC Milan.
But while Kluivert struggled to come to terms with his new life in Italy, it
became more and more obvious as last season developed that the team
assembled by Ferguson at Old Trafford was crying out for a player of his
particular talents.
The imminent signing of the powerful Kluivert, seen by many as an
``old-fashioned'' English-style centre forward, will more than fill the void
left by the departure of Sparky Hughes.
And even if Ferguson's spending spree ends at Kluivert, the Reds' attack for
the new season already looks to have the perfect balance with a big target
man operating alongside a razor-sharp predator, in either Cole or Solskjaer,
to feed off the pieces.
But Ferguson, clearly, has his heart set on teaming-up Kluivert with Dwight
Yorke in what would surely be the most devastating striking partnership in
British soccer, if not throughout Europe.
It was former England manager Graham Taylor, then boss at Aston Villa, who
first spotted Yorke playing for a local junior side in Tobago during Villa's
Caribbean tour in the late 1980s.
Taylor was smitten with the 16-year-old's amazing ball skills at first sight
but had his work cut out to persuade the youngster that his future career
lay in professional soccer.
Yorke and his best pal Brian Lara had already represented the West Indies at
cricket at U-15 level and both had sporting ambitions which stretched no
further than to play for their country at senior level in a Lord's Test
match.
It was a rather reluctant Yorke who followed Taylor and the Villa squad back
to England but it was a change of climate and a switch of sports which was
to pay dividends which neither player or manager could have envisaged 10
years ago.
For the talented West Indian who can keep the ball up in the air for hours
on end as a party piece, is now arguably the most popular player in the
history of Aston Villa.
© MLVG 98
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