Wayne Rooney: I didn't make Manchester United transfer request in 2013

I talked about Manchester United and the other Premier League teams' weekend games for the Illustrated Game podcast, and you can listen to that here if you want.

Ashley Young wants to turn his relatively recent good club form to get back into the England squad. He'd be an excellent person for the squad, certainly at tournaments, given his versatility, even if he didn't make the first XI. You can read about that in the Guardian.

Louis van Gaal has completely excommunicated Victor Valdes from the squad, which seems unnecessarily petty on the manager's part, but nobody knows exactly what is going on between the two. Needless to say, it will hardly enamour Van Gaal to the other Spaniards in the squad,. You can read about that in the Mirror, should you want to.

And in the Telegraph, there's a story explaining Wayne Rooney's side of the transfer request he apparently made at the end of Alex Ferguson's last season in charge. According to Rooney, not known for lying, he merely said it might be best for him to move on if he wasn't to be first choice anymore, having been eclipsed by Robin van Persie. It probably would have been, in truth, but at least his second half perfromance against Sunderland hinted that he could still play professionally at some level.