Sold!

"You can't always get what you want." remarked General Specific throwing down the tattered newspaper, annoyed. He hadn't been himself of late and when he did realise it he even felt a bit ashamed about it. The rest of the time he couldn't help it. No one was paying attention to him anyway except for Great Scot who looked up but maintained a diplomatic silence. Great Scot knew something that no one else knew, it wasn't dangerous nor was it scandalous which made it kind of uninteresting to the general public, but he hid it anyway.

Major Minor had meanwhile caught on to something. He had been smelling something fishy for the past fortnight but couldn't put his finger on it. Ordinarily, one wouldn’t want to poke things smelling of fish. It would have been an idle Englishman at the docks observing such an activity by a feline creature which led to the association between curiousity and cats. The part where it gets killed brings gruesome images to the mind.

But Major Minor knew that General Specific was referring to the, reportedly, more than 200mn pounds transfer budget and hoped that Great Scot wasn't on the decline and indeed had an ace up his sleeve. Desperate to know more he prodded Great Scot.

"Indeed. Ye listen to him for he be speaking the truth." said Great Scot cleverly going offroad.

"So what are you going to do about it?"

"Nothing much, buy a few from here and there."

"Tevez?"

Great Scot just nodded as a reply.

Was it an acknowledging nod? Was it an affirmative nod? It looked like one of those sad sympathetic nods one got at a funeral actually. Major Minor was still not satisfied, he hadn't learnt anything new.

“Ronaldo leaving isn't good, he was the unpredictable wild one. He didn't perform up to expectations very often and threw tantrums and wore flower hats and whatnot but on the pitch, irrespective of form, he was always a force to reckon with. If only the arrogant bastard wanted to stay. Rooney, the dependable old horse is the only other stalwart. Tevez wants to leave and Berbatov has so far only shown exceptional ball control and would be more useful on the training grounds behind the net or as half time entertainment. The likes of Nani, Welbeck and Macheda might just find the shoes a little too big to fill. Valencia? Ribery? Villa wanted to be his wife’s side if he played in Spain or by Torres’ if he played in England. Vucinic? Benzema? Silva?” Realizing that he had now started talking to himself Major Minor dropped it. Then he realized he had been talking to himself from the start. Was he was just thinking too much about it or were things actually looking shaky for United again? Could the thinking too much and talking to himself be a symptom of some deep psychological disorder in him? What if no one was able to diagnose it? Was he going crazy? Or was he just shit bored?

“Madrid on the other hand seem to never learn.” interrupted Captain Follow bringing Major Minors train of thought to an abrupt halt. “They screwed up the last time they tried the Galacticos show and we all know sequels always flop. And somehow they never seem to get tired of buying players United doesn’t want around. Beckham, Nistelrooy, Heinze… The Spanish are supposed to be the Inquisition Squad, not spoilt teenagers on a shopping spree.” he added, drawing an amused look from Great Scot who looked like he was enjoying it now.

“Where the hell are they getting the money from? Are they bailing out childishly splurgent sports clubs now too? What the hell is wrong with everyone?” exclaimed Baby Bitch making it appropriately clear that she disapproved. She didn’t care so much about the sport as she did about the money that exchanged hands though.

“We can’t invest more in olive oil, bull fighting is lame, tomato fighting more so, no more continents to discover, no more ancient civilizations to loot and plunder, all Picasso paintings sold, how about investing in costly Kickball players, hombre? Sí?” said Ambassador Boeing, in an awful Spanish accent, showing a rare flash of humour and pathetic sporting knowledge and still managing to sweep a valid point under the carpet.

“Well, AC Milan didn’t really win big last year and had a tight budget so it made sense for them to sell. As for the others, the boys at Inter be acting naive, Ibrahimovich is worth 80mn pounds to them maybe, not to others, Italian street peddlers trying to cheat a rich Spanish tourist, if ye ask me. Bayern Munich are German and have a history of being stubborn idiots. And speaking of nationalities, City has rich Arab owners traditionally good at starting religions and hate movements, not football teams. On top of which, Chelsea has a Russian owner traditionally good at pretty much nothing. Benitez is still around at Liverpool but then so are Torres and Gerrard. Half of Arsenal’s first line wouldn’t be allowed into a bar so it makes sense for them to not try and win anything until 2015. Valencia are doing the dumb thing by trying to sell their star player, it’s the money again I suppose. Real obviously is a severe case of obesity which could lead to heart problems which with their dysfunctional immune system is fatal. And Barcelona and Atletico Madrid, well…” rationalized Great Scot leaving it open. He tactfully avoided referring to United again.

Now that everyone had established that no one had a concrete point, the discussion petered off. Great Scot obviously wasn’t sharing whatever he knew leaving Major Minor with one more thing to think about, although they shared the feeling over Ronaldo. He was like a lot of other people they would miss, almost like Cantona all over again except for kicking fans and being French.

(Image originally from www.murphygoalposts.com)