Five Cantonas

There is absolutely no secret in the fact that Manchester United don’t have silly money to spend on players. This really wouldn’t be that much of a problem if it weren’t for the fact that there are now several clubs who very much do.

The latest name on the scene is PSG. The Parisian club got everyone’s attention last summer by signing Javier Pastore from under the noses of the elite, and have since proved that they weren’t playing games by snapping up Maxwell, Alex, Lavezzi and Thiago Motta.

Things have got stupid now, however, as they have moved for Thiago Silva and Zlatan Ibrahimovic of AC Milan for the combined fee of £51m. How can we compete with this? How can anyone without a sugar-daddy owner compete with this? It’s stupid.

I rate Ibra very, very highly. I think he’s the most complete striker on the planet, and he was hilariously awesome at the Euros. Unfortunately in the eyes of the majority of English fans the only football that exists if the Premiership, so people think he’s useless. One TalkSport caller last week even said that he thought Andy Carroll was more technically gifted.

I know less about Thiago Silva, although I do know he’s strong, fast, intelligent and almost universally hailed as one of the top five centre-backs in world football. He will certainly improve a PSG side that is now heavily influenced by South American players.

United, on the other hand, managed to mug Dortmund blind for Shinji Kagawa and have raided Crewe for an unproven teenage midfield player. Hardly inspiring stuff but, when you have £51 million changing hands for two players, one of whom is at the very end of his career, what else can you do? If it wasn’t PSG it would have been City, Madrid, Terek Grozny, Anzhi, Malaga or any one of these stupid teams bankrolled by some dickhead in the middle east who’s only interested in owning a top football club because his fleet of sports cars don’t do enough to compensate for his tiny penis.