Theatre of Schemes

While Manchester United are doing a creditable job on the field of making Chelsea at least think about whether they have the title sown up, it's a sign of their disappointing season that the main news is off the field: specifically their newly agreed sponsorship deal with the American Insurance Group (AIG), which will see the AIG logo on their shirts from next season.

A similar sized deal with online gambling group Mansion fell through over the weekend, apparently because of MU's scruples about a sponsorship deal with a gambling company. But of course it depends what the meaning of "gambling" is, since AIG has had a litany of legal problems relating to, shall we say, aggressive financial transactions, quite of few of which were Oirish in nature. Now in fairness they weren't transactions related to sport, which was probably MU's concern about the Mansion deal. But they have put themselves somewhat at the mercy of any future bad publicity that lands on AIG, and they have set the stage for many seasons of the mocking "USA! USA!" chant of opposing fans.

UPDATE: Saturday's Wall Street Journal report on the deal notes that AIG's English CEO is ... a Spurs fan.