For months now I've been ridiculing the stupid and bizarre letters into the Shropshire Star, as regular readers will no doubt know. However, in a slight change, it is not a letter that is prompting me to blog. It is an article written on one of the sports pages. Let's check it out, and marvel in it's irrelevance and banality:
If Sir Alex Ferguson need any reminding of the fickle nature of football supporters, he would have got it by tuning into MUTV immediately after Manchester United's stunning FA Cup demise.
Not really. We were all angry after the game, and things are sometimes said in the heat of the moment which you later regret. I for one asked for the ground to be destroyed and for Berbatov to be given as a human sacrifice in the centre circle. A few days on, I appreciate that is nonsense. The ground can stay.
Ferguson is a man who has delivered 11 league titles - and is currently aiming for a record fourth on the trot - five FA Cups and two Champions League triumphs in a period of unparalleled dominance. This, in case anyone needed to know, followed a fallow period that brought three FA Cups in 16 years that also included the ignominy of relegation to the old Second Division.
Get on with it.
It has, quite rightly, made Ferguson bulletproof in managerial terms. The thought of United willingly getting rid of the 68 year old to make way for Jose Mourinho, or anyone else for that matter, is impossible to conceive. Yet the first caller on the post-match phone-in wanted exactly that, along with the sales of a dozen players deemed not worthy of United's famous history, a history Ferguson has done so much to shape.
Not too sure what this article is about, to be honest. I did have a horrible feeling it was a load of shit based on one phone-call.
Now, it was easy to imagine this reaction as being some elaborate hoax, that the caller was sitting in front of his armchair wearing a blue and white Man City scarf eagerly making mischief ahead of tomorrow's Carling Cup match.
Oh, wait, I was right. It is. Cool.
Yet it also emphasised just how difficult Ferguson's job is in rapidly changing times across the whole football landscape.
Not too sure what this bit means.
"I don't know where he was coming from or how long he had been waiting to make the call but if he truly believes getting rid of the best manager Manchester United have had would help improve the situation, he is living in different world to me," said Lou Macari, a pundit on the phone-in.
Thank God. Its okay folks - Little Lou is here! You can rely on him to talk sense.
"The problem, and this is football's problem, not just Manchester United, is that the players are just not there anymore.
Or maybe you can't rely on him. He is getting on a bit now, mind.
Problem with Manchester United on Sunday - the players just weren't there. There was one hysterical moment where Gibson passed it to Neville.....and he had disappeared! Haha!
In the past, United had guys like Steve Bruce, Roy Keane, Bryan Robson and Mark Hughes who would literally go to war in order to win a football match.
Literally.
I don't see many of those characters around now."
They are all off in Afghanistan, Lou!
Macari is reluctant to stick the boot into United's players, especially the young ones who still have plenty to learn and much development to do.
I dunno mate, he did just say that none of them own any testicles anymore, pretty much.
It leaves Ferguson to massage a few egos over the next 48 hours to try and piece together a winning team for Wednesday's Carling Cup semi-final.
A game which has now been cancelled. Oh dear, this is just such a long-winded, strange, irrelevant waste of ink. You made me type all of that out, Simon Stone, and therefore I dislike you.
Coming up in tomorrow's Slop - an article about someone phoning The Wright Stuff!
