Greetings FLOM fans, as this is the first of many 2012_13 posts, welcome to the new season. It's the 4th of July, #Happy Independence Day to those in the US, but also the last day of holiday for United players who had no summer engagements. Tomorrow morning, you can bet Carrington will be a buzz with optimism for the season ahead along with one or two new faces.
Speaking of which, while we were away, United added Nick Powell but more crucially Shinji Kagawa to their midfield__something that is a season or two overdue and the manager expects to add one or two faces before the window closes. Hopefully it will be another top class midfielder as well as a new left back. Just as well it is that I add that our would be cover left back Fabio was loaned to QPR.
The fixture list for the new season was releases on the 18th of last month with the only qualm being away games in just about every Champions League week. The last time we had such an issue with the fixtures was in the 2010 season that saw us lose ALL of those away games after a Champions League schedule_fingers crossed it won't be an issue again.
Meanwhile, the Glazer family has floated about 64m quid on the New York Stock Exchange in a bid to pay off the debt. Quite frankly, writing about the Glazers sickens me so I'll just end that bit with LOVE UNITED, HATE GLAZER.
At the moment we still do not have the squad to comfortably expect to get our trophy back but with the genius that is SAF, who knows.
The squad is going virtually around the world for this summer's tour with destinations South Africa, Norway, China and Germany among the countries that the Reds will visit. The most attractive fixture no doubt is against Barcelona in Norway_a game that had its 43,000 tickets sold out in 30 mins.
We've got De Gea, Cleverley and Giggs at the Olympics so that means we'll have to do without them for August and a part of September in the league.
Whilst I may not be able to chip in with analysis after every preseason game, its great to have United back in action.