Rival's add third dimension to Ronaldo war of words...

It's well documented that "Big Phil" Scolari has been opening his big mouth a bit too much when telling Ronaldo that in his opinion, the player should join Real Madrid. Scolari is of course entitled to his opinion, but the fact that he is now the Chelsea manager in waiting has added another dimension to the already bitter 'war of words' that has erupted between United and Real Madrid.

We now have a situation whereby the Chelsea and Portugal manager is effectively interfering on the future of a star player from a rival Premier League club.

For their part, Chelsea had always maintained that they were perfectly happy with how their search for a new manager was going. To many observers this "happy scenario" didn't appear to make a lot of sense, which raises the question is it not a fair bet that they always knew that they had Scolari in the bag? We are left to assume that Scolari was their second-choice target with Carlo Ancelotti being number one; because it was only after Ancelotti ruled himself out of the running did Chelsea finally make their announcement about Scolari. This in turn leads us to speculate that Chelsea knew about their prospective new manager openly advising a player from a rival team on his future.

It's doubtful that Chelsea's top-brass will have even mentioned the Ronaldo situation to Scolari, they will have been rightly more concerned with their search for a manager, but the scenario that they could have played a part in what could be described as a KGB style sabotage plot will no doubt give the conspiracy theorists among our support something to chew on.

Nonetheless, rival managers advising players on their future when it has nothing to do with them isn't on. It's a bit like Jose Mourinho advising Ronaldo what to do, or Fergie telling Drogba to move to Milan, it's simply not done. It should be a case of none players off the green. Mind your own business.

At the end of the day, Ronaldo will be his own man, no matter what anyone else says - sadly, that probably includes Fergie. The player will decide what is best for his own future, we United fans will have to just live with it and get on with it if he decides that he wants to go to Madrid.

My gut feeling is that United will NOT sell him to Madrid unless it is for ridiculous money, certainly well over the £60m that has been touted. There has been reports that Madrid will want to offer Robben and Robinho in part-exchange and there's also been suggestions that Madrid do not have the cash to buy Ronaldo outright - which is probably why they're hoping that the Reds will do a deal.

As far as Chelsea are concerned, the simmering tensions between United and the West London club following on from the back end of last season will undoubtedly be further strained.