Beckham's exit strategy tarnishes his name again...

They say that breaking up is always hard to do, and so it seems is Beckham's exit from Real Madrid, with the club officials claiming that Beckham had toyed with Madrid for over two months having agreed to quit the Spanish club and by purchasing a house in LA.

Stories have been linking Beckham to LA Galaxy for over two months, back in November 2006, Red Issue, the United fanzine, broke a story claiming that Beckham would indeed join Galaxy. RI also predicted that Malcolm Glazer will buy the Los Angeles club, the second part of that story has yet to materialise. We await with bated breath on that front.

The thing is Beckham upset many United fans by the way he engineered his move away from United to join Real. The Reds got wind that Beckham wasn't going to sign a new United deal and then set about flushing out his true intentions by openly trying to sell him to Barcelona, this ploy worked to an extent because it brought Madrid out of the woodwork, but it also reduced the players transfer value.... But how ironic that Beckham has now done the dirty on Real, as speculation suggested that they too had been negotiating with the then United player behind United's back and without permission. Fans of the Old Trafford club will recall with disdain the nods and winks exchanged with the Real stars at the end of Beckham's last champions league game against Madrid for United. The upshot was that a player who'd given everything for United left the club under something of a cloud, because the way his exit was handled left a bitter taste in the mouth.

Roll the clock forward to 2007 and once again supporters of Madrid may well be thinking the same, this isn't the way transfers should be conducted. As things stand Beckham wont even get a chance to say goodbye to the Real fans - which is precisely what happened at United. Reds wont care too much about the Madrid situation, but from a United perspective many fans didn't agree with the way he'd gone about it.

In a world where players are sold like lumps of meat to the highest bidder there's an argument which says football is dog-eat-dog, which it is of course, but few players have earned the right to be considered as true Red legends at United and ironically players from the same the United youth team as Beckham are likely to be remembered more fondly I refer to Giggs, Scholes and Gary Neville.

Beckham has had a fabulous career and he's not made that many mistakes, but if you asked fans of United to name them, the manner of his United exit will be mentioned for sure.