Ahead of tomorrow night's Carling Cup semi-final, Matt Dickinson at the Times launches a staunch defence of Gary Neville for the comments he made regarding Carlos Tevez. Dickinson reckons that the Manchester United captain was justified in making his point and that Tevez is just another greedy footballer.

"According to the Butterfly Effect, small, seemingly insignificant incidents can come to have a vast, unforeseen outcome; the flap of wings that ultimately causes a tornado. Football now has its own parochial example. Gary Neville makes some sensible comments in a Maltese newspaper, The Times, and, before you know it, Manchester police are on riot alert, braced for mayhem at Old Trafford tomorrow night.

Carlos Tévez is in for a Welcome to Hell in the Carling Cup semi-final, second leg. United fans may even suspend their anti-Glazer protests to concentrate on the Argentine defector. In Tévez’s world, he is the one with right on his side in this escalating feud: the man disrespected.

It suits him to paint a picture of a footballer who would have died for United but, cast out, had no choice than to pack up his shooting boots and, like one of Clint Eastwood’s wandering gunslingers, head to the next town. That is one side of the story, but an entirely self-serving one also peddled by Kia Joorabchian, his representative. Self-serving because it deflects from the fact that the move may have been inspired by other motives, such as the pot of gold on the other side of Manchester."

Staying in Manchester, United striker Wayne Rooney is one of the form players in the Premier League at the moment, so it's perfect for timing for former Arsenal defender Martin Keown to regale us with tales of his days marking the England striker back in the day. He even offers up a bit of advice for Rooney's opposing defenders in the Mail.

"Wayne Rooney is worse than an annoying wasp. He just won’t go away, buzzing all around the opposition’s defence and penalty box. You’d kill a wasp, but you just can’t get rid of Rooney. What makes him so difficult to play against is that he is a very determined player, very strong

Against someone like that, you have to mark them extremely tightly. You must be virtually in his boots when you are marking him. You have to force him away from the goal, stay as tight as you can and keep him going in the wrong direction. But it is very difficult to keep someone like that quiet for 90 minutes, especially when he has good options around him.

It’s always difficult dealing with that type of player. Dennis Bergkamp used to do it, Gianfranco Zola and Teddy Sheringham too. They just wander into that little area. There’s then the element of surprise and a communication problem between the midfield and defence. There are times when you are playing against a Zola or a Sheringham and you would love to go and pick him up but you have to let the midfielders do it.

My golden rule used to be that if I wasn’t sure whether to go or not, I would just stand still. Manchester United had particularly good movement of players and I remember Paul Scholes making those runs from deep or Ryan Giggs coming in from wide into the hole that you leave.

Another former Arsenal player, former record goalscorer Ian Wright, has also chosen to focus his attention on Rooney, suggesting in the Sun that any potential sale of the striker would be "catastrophic" for Manchester United.

"It is not only Wayne Rooney's feet that are on fire at the moment - his ears must be burning too. His red-hot form for Manchester United has fuelled more talk he could soon be set for a multi-million pound reunion with Cristiano Ronaldo at Real Madrid. With all the financial goings-on at Old Trafford, I could see Rooney running out at the Bernabeu in a white shirt next season - especially if he has a good World Cup.

Indeed, I would be very surprised if former Red Devils idol Ronaldo, who left United for Madrid for a world-record £80million last summer, is NOT badgering his new club's head coach Manuel Pellegrini and president Florentino Perez on a daily basis, telling them to splash the cash to nab his old pal.

But despite their confusing cash situation, from a football point of view United cannot afford to sell Rooney. Losing one superstar in a year is a big problem, but losing two would be catastrophic."