MAY AS WELL BORROW BECKS TOO:

Paul Scholes's return to Manchester United highlights that club's cupboard of emerging talent is bare (Mark Ogden, 08 Jan 2012, Telegraph)

The fact that Ferguson has welcomed Scholes back - bizarrely, he is the first central midfielder to sign for United since Anderson arrived in 2007 - highlights the growing concerns about the future at Old Trafford.

Where are the emerging youngsters? If Paul Pogba and Ravel Morrison are the future, then how long will they have to wait to prove it?

And although the Glazer family have insisted to Ferguson that money is there for new players, is it really as substantial as we are led to believe?

Would it have hurt the finances so much to have met Wesley Sneijder or Samir Nasri's wage demands last summer?
,br> If the answer to that one is yes, then the preferable option for Manchester United is to coax a former great out of retirement and apply a sticking plaster to a gaping wound.

No central defenders, no central midfielders, and no forward who can create his own shot makes for a pretty useless youth movement.