Gyan’s Manchester United dream: our nightmare or idle chatter?
Posted on February 17th, 2011 | by salutsunderland in Ghana,Manchester United,Sunderland
Asamoah by addick-tedKevin
How much or how little do we read in today’s offering from our friends at the Ghanasoccernet website?
They quote Asamoah Gyan as saying the following:
“Of course I’m a big fan of Manchester United and will like to play for them if the chance comes my way.”
As far as the first part of the statement goes, that is surely just par for the course. I am not saying no one in Manchester or its vicinity supports United, but they do seem to have an awful lot of fans who could barely place the city on a map. Has Gyan even been there other than to play for us?
Again, the second part of the statement could easily come from the mouth of a good 90 per cent of the men playing football around the world. United is a glamorous club known to all and an overwhelming proportion of players, like loads of fans, are gloryseekers.
And to be fair to Gyan, he went on to say:
“But at the moment I’m at another great club and will want to concentrate on that and help repay the faith the club and the fans have reposed in me.”
So I pass on the quotes with the usual health warning. The Ghanasoccernet story will grab an enormous number of hits simply because the headline links our striker and United. Sunderland fans will read it because of that dangling of alarm bells the headline provokes (even in phlegmatic old M Salut); United supporters will be curious, though they’d probably never admit as much.
Otherwise, it is a complete non-story, except that it reinforces our oft-stated demand that if and when Sir Alex Ferguson comes calling for any of our players, the Bruce/Quinn/Short triumvirate plays Daniel Levy-standard hardball and politely requests the earth plus Danny Welbeck in return. Or no deal.
And memo to Asamoah: Ghanasoccernet also tells us: “The World cup star signed a US$130,000 a year deal with giant telecommunication network Glo as their brand ambassador on Wednesday.” Would you have got that sitting on the bench, as often as not, at Old Trafford instead of banging in goals for Sunderland and attracting so much attention that poor Darren Bent went scurrying off to a team of strugglers in the Midlands?
* see full story at Ghanasoccer.
Monsieur Salut