Back door success
Manchester United have crept into next season’s European Champions tournament by the back door by dint of winning the subsidiary competition against the young Ajax team in Sweden.
It looked to me an act of some desperation when UEFA decided to allot the winners of a largely prosaic Thursday tournament a place among the genuine champions. Rather as, many years ago, Alan Hardaker, the embattled secretary of the Football League, managed to boost his initially faltering League Cup tournament by getting a place for the winners in Europe.