Old Trafford Lounge

6 of one, half-a-dozen of the other.

If he's as bad as he was when he came back earlier in the season then I'd rather he stayed off the pitch.

Kagawa back in training, now thats good news.

Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson has accused Tottenham of "blatant manipulation" over the signing of defender Zeki Fryers and wants the Premier League to investigate the deal.

Fryers left United for Standard Liege for a small compensation fee in August, after Spurs baulked at paying £6m.

But now Spurs have signed the 20-year-old from Standard for a reported £3m.

"I'm disappointed in Tottenham. I think it's a blatant manipulation of the situation," said Ferguson.

"I think the league should look into it and I think they should stop his registration until they examine it."

However, United are yet to make a formal complaint to the Premier League, who declined to comment on the matter.

Tottenham told BBC Sport that they only made a second approach for Fryers after being made aware that the player was "homesick" in Belgium.

A Spurs spokesman said: "Zeki enjoyed his time at Standard - however, when Standard sacked their manager in November Zeki wasn't part of the new manager's plans which he accepts and understands happens in football.

"Unfortunately, a combination of this and the fact he had become homesick meant he wanted to return to England.

"His representatives made contact with clubs in England. This afforded us a second opportunity to sign the player and as per Fifa's solidarity contribution mechanism, Manchester United will receive 5% of the transfer fee we have paid."

“There’s nothing we can do about it but we should really register our discontent,” Fergie said. “The registration should be stopped. To me, I think it’s a blatant manipulation of the rules. Tottenham did nothing wrong as he went to Standard Liege. They tried to buy him off us and we’d been looking for a certain figure. They wouldn’t pay it but asked if they could take him down there on trial and, at that time, he was out of contract in June anyway. So he went down on trial and he went to Portugal with them. They then said they weren’t prepared to pay the money and, all of a sudden, he signed for Standard Liege. We knew immediately and suspected that he would return to Tottenham in January and that’s happened.”

A transparently dodgy deal. The irony of Fergie being the one to moan about it, though, is great.

I just find it amazing that Fryers was 'homesick' despite him saying that he was enjoying life in Belgium only a month ago.

The thing I don't get about the whole thing is Fryers is such a monumentally average player, why have Spurs gone to all this effort for Fryers of all people?

And he wanted £20,000 a week as well, would be hilarious if they were paying him that.

I'm not one to say, but maybe Tottenham Hotspur's scouting network is better equipped and more qualified to judge a player's future potential than you are.

Well he's not a shit player, the fact we wanted to keep him until he started being a greedy cunt and that Spurs signed him attest to that but there's little to suggest that he'll be a great player.

I'd be very surprised if he ever became a better player than, say, Danny Simpson and given that Spurs have BAE, Vertonghen, Naughton and Rose (who has by all accounts been excellent on loan at Sunderland) to play in that position it makes it even more pointless.

If I'm being cynical, that gif of him falling over twice will probably be the most memorable thing bout his career.

It'd be perfectly reasonable to assume that he'd put on more of a brave face, so to speak, whilst he was a Standard Liege player, even if he was feeling homesick and wanted to come back to England.

If he's spectacularly average then why are Manchester United demanding £6m for him? And if they rate him at £6m, why are they refusing to pay him what Spurs are willing to?

Manchester United are still the bigger cunts in this.

According to whom? You?

As you said, United liked him enough to want to offer him a contract, and now Spurs have gone out of their way to go and sign him for £3m or so. There's obviously some potential there. I don't see how you can say with confidence that he's unlikely to be better than someone like Danny Simpson, or that his career won't ever amount to anything significant. Have you seen one game in which he featured in Belgium?

I've never seen him play but I find it astounding that you're able to criticise him and effectively writing him off at the age of 20 despite having barely ever seen him play. There's a certain arrogance to football fans that leads them to believe their knowledge of a player's ability is just as good, if not greater than professional scouts who are paid a lot of money to spend hours researching these guys. I'm more inclined to believe Spurs, like every big club, have thoroughly researched and weighed up the deal and are more likely to be right in their judgement of his value than some bitter, uninformed United fan.