Whisper it, but United may have put one over Jose with Mata deal

Well, that didn’t last long. Little more than a week since it became clear Chelsea would do business with Manchester United over Juan Mata, and the first casualty of the decision is already known.
Wayne Rooney in a Chelsea shirt. Whoomp, as the song goes, there it is.
Turns out there was no cunning plan, no deal struck behind closed doors. Losing Mata was not just another stage of some wider negotiations to be continued this summer. Chelsea really did sell last season’s player of the year to one of their most significant rivals simply for the money. We will not be tuning in for the next thrilling instalment when the series returns in June.

Scroll down to see Juan Mata's first warm up in a Manchester United shirt

Blessing: Jose Mourinho signed off Juan Mata's £37.1million move to Manchester United

Prize asset: Juan Mata made his debut for United against Cardiff City at Old Trafford

Juan Mata runs out for first warm up as Man United player

Returning hero: Wayne Rooney started the Cardiff clash for Manchester United on the bench

   

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In fact, so off-the-table was Rooney that the clubs did not even speak directly about Mata for fear of his name coming up. The deal was  conducted through intermediaries because United knew Chelsea would ask about Rooney, and they knew what the answer was going to be, and they didn’t want the inevitable frostiness to derail the transfer on which they could agree.
If the Glazers have one regret about their time at Manchester United, it is caving in over Cristiano Ronaldo’s transfer to Real Madrid. Having rejected the first bid, they became convinced that Ronaldo’s departure was inevitable and Sir Alex Ferguson told the player that if he stayed one more season and Madrid remained interested, he could go.
Privately, the Glazer brothers now wish they had not been so easily persuaded. They wonder if there were any terms that could have kept Ronaldo from Madrid’s clutches — a deal like the £300,000 being offered to Rooney.
Either way, they regret not digging in, even if it meant Ronaldo running down his contract and leaving for nothing. That would certainly have been the policy had Rooney refused this new deal point blank. Maybe  United’s intransigence has even helped to make up his mind. 
So what happens next? Rooney signs a very expensive contract sooner rather than later, it seems. And some will  say its size smacks of desperation on United’s part, and that he has held them to ransom once again.
Yet if Rooney stays it will be another big statement, like the signing of Mata, a victory for the club and David Moyes in dark times.
Chelsea were hoping to achieve more than a mild loss of face at Old Trafford with their pursuit of Rooney. They were solving a big problem, recruiting United’s best player, dealing a savage blow to morale and damaging a rival in a way that would be irreparable in the short term. The opposite may now have happened. It is Chelsea who appear weaker, albeit £37m richer.
Nobody can guarantee that Mata’s transfer will succeed, or that United can be propelled towards next  season’s Champions League after such a miserable start, but changing  Rooney’s attitude is a huge step.
Before the Mata saga began it was widely suspected that his departure from Old Trafford was more when than if. Now, however extravagant the numbers, he looks ready to commit. He may have played United’s negotiators like violins, but most regard that as preferable to playing them with a supporting network of Willian, Oscar and Eden Hazard next season.
If the idea of running all transfers by him seems far-fetched, it would certainly make sense if Rooney received assurances that big improvements were coming. Starting with the revelation about Mata.
United may look some distance behind Chelsea right now but, qualify for the Champions League next season, and there are ways they might become an even more attractive proposition.

Goal hero: Robin van Persie celebrates after opening the scoring against the Welsh side

Heading for glory? Things suddenly look brighter over at Old Trafford with the arrival of Mata from Chelsea

Casualty: Cristiano Ronaldo left Manchester United for £80million in 2009

WHY THE DRINKS SHOULD HAVE BEEN ON SWANN

Graeme Swann has a media career to nurture so has busily been doing the rounds justifying his sudden retirement in Australia. He is to be admired for the honest assessment that he could no longer influence matches but the rest of his explanation does not stand up.
‘Why carry on playing if you are hindering the team?’ he said. ‘I could not just stay on for a holiday in the last two weeks, ferrying drinks around.’
Why not? The alternative, retiring after three losing Tests, merely gave Australia extra ammunition. Another Pom gone; the dressing-room comedian, too.
So ferrying drinks was exactly what Swann should have done, until his announcement could have no wider effect. Then he wouldn’t have to justify himself to anybody.

Take the case of Luke Shaw. Southampton insist Shaw will not be sold in this transfer window. There is increasing likelihood he will leave at some stage in 2014, though. Southampton are ambitious but have always been a selling club, and £25m for a teenage full back would be too much to resist.
If Chelsea and United are, once more, in direct competition, Shaw’s advisers will be mindful of the fate of other prospects who moved to clubs without an obvious means of progression: Jack Rodwell, Adam Johnson and Scott Sinclair at Manchester City,  Wilfried Zaha at United and, further back, Wayne Bridge and Shaun Wright-Phillips at Chelsea. And that is where United hold the advantage.
Patrice Evra is fading fast with no obvious replacement and Moyes has a team in need of overhaul, with arrivals likely to be given a chance.
By contrast, Chelsea have already realised the best part of plan A. Faced with an issue over Ashley Cole, Mourinho switched Cesar Azpilicueta from right back to left back with such excellent results that Ryan Bertrand was allowed on loan to Aston Villa.

Preferred option: Eden Hazard (right) has played in front of Mata this season at Stamford Bridge

No 10: Oscar has taken up Mata's role behind the lone striker with Willian completing the trio

Joe Kinnear, director of football at Newcastle United, recently told fans how hard it was to buy quality players in the January window. Seems pretty easy to sell them, though.

Indeed, Azpilicueta may have grown into the best performer in that position in the Premier League, keeping Cole out and enabling Mourinho to play Branislav Ivanovic on the right.
At the very least, Azpilicueta will remain a left-back option next year, making Shaw one for the future. Sometimes, as Rodwell is discovering at City, that future seems a long way off. 
Shaw has no imperative to leave Southampton for anything less than a starting place, so why would he choose Chelsea over United?
United’s struggles are far from over but, without doubt, following Mata’s arrival they are beginning to ease.
Just as Everton regard the commitment shown by Leighton Baines as cause for optimism, so getting Rooney’s contract signed off would be a significant boost for Moyes. Mata was one man, getting off a helicopter, but sometimes reinforcements arrive from the most unexpected sources.

Hot property: Luke Shaw (right) may move from Southampton at some point in 2014

Rocky road: Jack Rodwell has struggled for first team appearances and has suffered injuries at City

 

FUTURE IS NOT SO GOLDEN FOR GB HERO AMY
In December, the Australian Cricketers’ Association published the results of a survey about retirement. The ACA contacted every player who had left state or international cricket since 2005, and asked them how it had gone.
They discovered that 39 per cent of ex-cricketers experienced initial high levels of stress and anxiety, while 25 per cent suffered depression or feelings of helplessness for longer. 
A significant number, 43 per cent, felt they lost their identity after finishing as a cricketer.
A cross-sport survey in Britain by the Professional Players’ Federation recorded similar results.
Focusing on the two-year period following retirement, it found 24 per cent of 1,199 sports people questioned had experienced mental problems, addiction, financial issues or ill health.
Not every athlete retires with a multi-million-pound pension pot, John Terry’s house or a cushy number on BT Sport. Some must find work, having trained for nothing beyond competition for 20 years; others find it hard to accept reduced status or ability.

Hero: Amy Williams won the only GB medal at the 2010 Winter Olympics

And then there is Amy Williams Remember Amy? She won Great Britain’s only gold of the 2010 Winter Olympics. The first solo Olympic medal this country had collected at the event since Robin Cousins in 1980. Williams travelled fastest down Whistler Mountain on a bob skeleton run so unforgiving that it had already claimed the life of Georgian luge slider Nodar Kumaritashvili.
She was interviewed by Clare Balding and was very excited about it. She posed, back home, in glamorous frocks and smiled until her face ached. And then she sort of disappeared. 
What Williams had not anticipated was that the morning after the Vancouver Games ended was also day one of the build-up to London 2012. Following an initial whirl of publicity, the public appetite was for anticipation, not history. ‘Everyone wanted London athletes,’ she told me, during a chance meeting.

Focus: Williams quit two years after winning the gold through injury

‘They would rather have a potential bronze medallist from London, than a gold medallist from Vancouver. They still would.’
That wasn’t so much of a problem while Williams was in competition; but, two years after winning gold, following multiple knee operations and three bulging discs, she quit. The same year the British public were enraptured by London, Williams retired, unnoticed.
And it was a peculiar withdrawal, even by athletic standards, because the day Williams stepped away from her sport she gave it up for ever. There is no skeleton equivalent of sport’s second act.

'Not every athlete retires with a multi-million-pound pension pot, John Terry’s house or a cushy number on BT Sport. Some must find work, having trained for nothing beyond competition for 20 years; others find it hard to accept reduced status or ability.'
 

David Lloyd was still playing for Accrington Cricket Club at 61, Jack Nicklaus hit the ceremonial tee shot at the US Masters in 2013, Sir Trevor Brooking turned out for Sunday league team Havering Nalgo after retiring from the professional game. Yet Arthur, Williams’s sled, is in bits now, and there is no skeleton course in Britain to sate any need for speed.
If Williams was German, she could turn up at the local run and get her kicks that way. Being British, she would have to make special provision with a foreign club, book flights, hotels and transport her equipment abroad. She says she cannot afford that.
Still, if there is ever a month when a gold medallist winter Olympian is in demand it is this February. Williams will be in Sochi commentating for the BBC and has also been engaged by Ski Sunday. For a brief period, winter sport is news again.
A gold medal is perceived as the beginning of an endless open-top bus parade of acclaim. It isn’t. These days Williams seems quite bitter that minor spats in football attract big headlines, while leaders in her sport toil in anonymity. Her friend Lizzy Yarnold may keep the skeleton gold medal in Britain yet, right now, could walk down any street here unnoticed.
That may even be the case 12 months from now.
Eddie Edwards, meanwhile, is back in demand. It is a short-lived and random beast, this life after sport.

 

AND WHILE WE'RE AT IT...
The fifth-round draw was widely depicted as a boost for the beleaguered FA Cup and a fixtures nightmare for the major clubs. Manchester City face Chelsea the weekend before they play Barcelona, Arsenal meet Liverpool just days before they face Bayern Munich.
Sadly, it is the FA Cup that faces the nightmare scenario, as City and Arsenal send out weakened teams to keep key players fresh for the European ties. There is much talk of fixing the Cup, but there is little that can realistically be done about its standing now.

Weakened? Manchester City will still field the likes of talented youngster Marcos Lopes (centre) in the FA Cup

Abolishing replays would ease fixture congestion, returning the semi-finals to neutral venues would keep Wembley special and setting in stone the final as the showpiece season finale played at 3pm on a Saturday in May would restore some of the grandeur — but if City draw Chelsea three days before any match with Barcelona, only one game will have priority.
That’s just the way it is now.

 

Sunderland can afford to ignore Di Canio own goal
Sunderland are considering legal action against former manager Paolo Di Canio over an interview that was heavily critical of some players. Di Canio had particularly harsh words for John O’Shea, Phil Bardsley, Lee Cattermole and Steven Fletcher. ‘Rotten’ wasn’t the half of it.
‘There are managers that are not good enough for some groups but there are also some groups that are not good enough for a manager,’ said Di Canio. ‘In this case, it is the second option.’

War of words: Sunderland are considering legal action over comments made by Paolo di Canio

Good enough? Gus Poyet has helped Sunderland to the Capital One Cup final against Manchester City

Yet Di Canio’s group seem good enough for Gus Poyet. Indeed, they are good enough to have reached the Capital One Cup final, the last 16 of the FA Cup and have averaged 1.2 points per game under Poyet, compared to 0.7 under Di Canio.
Sunderland should call off the lawyers. The timing of Di Canio’s attack, coming soon after one of the most dramatic victories in Sunderland’s recent  history was so woefully misjudged it was as if his bullets exploded in the chamber.
The case against him needs no legal reinforcement, it is there in the numbers, in the black and white.

 

Emmanuel Adebayor will have a foot in both camps when Tottenham Hotspur face Manchester City on Wednesday. Adebayor may be a Tottenham player, but £40,000 of his weekly wage is still paid by City as a condition of his transfer.
There may be a greater travesty in football right now but it is hard to imagine one.

Travesty: Manchester City are still paying a chunk of Emmanuel Adebayor's hefty salary