Glazer, who was supposed to be at the NFL owners’ meeting in Washington DC, is said to have slipped out of the States and arrived at Carrie in a taxi direct from Ringway at about 12.15, having been picked up by an MEC tail who’d been tipped off by their allies in Washington. Joel was supposedly seen entering a meeting room with the Boss, leaving the complex at about 3pm, whereupon he headed straight for the airport. Joel, who was not seen in Washington all day, finally emerged for a picture shoot with Malcolm and Bryan in the US capital at 8.30pm local time, when the AP agency snapped him. Thus the impression was created that Joel, who had attended an NFL dinner on Tuesday night, had never been away. It is assumed Joel was responding to Fergie’s ultimatum that, as he was off on his hols on June 1st, they’d have to get their arses in gear if they wanted to talk turkey before the summer transfer season kicks off. United and David Gill are stating that "our position is no meeting between Gill and Glazer took place" and claim that Gill was at a board meeting in London.
Intriguingly, the Daily Star’s veteran United hack Bill Thornton did run a story on Tuesday claiming that a Fergie-Glazer meeting would take place the next day, having been tipped off that Fergie had been called back from a Scottish trip for an ‘important meeting’ at OT. After his story appeared, Glazer’s PR people briefed that it was a load of bollocks and said that any such meeting might be deemed improper because we are still technically in an Offer Period. Ahem: quite. Presumably Fergie and Glazer, if they met, would have discussed transfer budgets and targets – it would therefore be no surprise that 48 hours later United released their list of players who would be let go, which shockingly included Roy Carroll, whose agent was confidently predicting on Monday that Roy would be signing a new deal.
The MEC is expected to release a statement building upon this surveillance operation before Monday’s Apollo meeting.