BREAKING (and I use that word loosely): Manchester United have gone to Ireland for a training camp, Lisandro Martínez and Patrick Dorgu are in the travelling squad, and Michael Carrick is apparently just doing normal football management things. That's the official line. I am choosing, with every fibre of my being, not to believe it.

Let me set the scene. United's season is, and I'm being generous here, a bit of a shambles. They've got an FA Cup semi to think about, a league position that makes you want to lie down in a dark room, and a general aura of "we're not sure what we're building but we're definitely building something, probably." Into this situation, Carrick has apparently decided that what everyone needs is a trip to Ireland.

Now, I've been doing this job for long enough to know that when a football club says "training camp," what they actually mean is one of approximately nine things, and only two of them involve actual training. Sources close to sources tell me that the real agenda in Ireland is far more interesting than shuttle runs and rondo drills. Allow me to speculate irresponsibly.

First: the Martínez situation. The man has been injured more often than he's been fit this season, and yet here he is, named in the travelling squad for a training camp like he's just popped back from a long weekend rather than another spell on the treatment table. When a defender who's spent half the campaign watching from the stands suddenly appears at an overseas camp, that's not recovery. That's an audition. Either Carrick is seeing whether Martínez can still move without wincing, or he's parading him in front of potential buyers who happen to be "on holiday" in County Kildare. I have no evidence for this. I have a feeling, and in my line of work, that's basically the same thing.

Second: Dorgu. The lad only arrived in January and he's already being taken on a bonding trip to Ireland like he's a new employee at a mid-level accountancy firm. "Let's do some trust falls in Galway, Patrick, really get to know each other." I'm told the squad are staying at a facility that has excellent pitches, world-class recovery suites, and, crucially, absolutely no mobile phone signal for three miles in any direction. Coincidence? Almost certainly. Am I going to pretend it isn't? Absolutely not.

Third, and this is the big one: why Ireland? United have Carrington. They have money. They could go literally anywhere. They could train in Dubai, in Portugal, in the car park of a Tesco Extra and still have better facilities than most clubs in world football. But no. Ireland. A country famous for its hospitality, its scenery, and its complete lack of paparazzi hanging around training grounds with long-lens cameras. If you wanted to hold secret meetings about, say, the future of your entire squad without anyone noticing, you would choose Ireland. I'm not saying that's what's happening. I'm saying that if I were a football club trying to conduct a covert squad overhaul while pretending to do box-to-box fitness work, this is exactly the move I would make.

The beautiful thing about a training camp is that nobody can prove what actually happens there. It's football's equivalent of "what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas," except instead of Vegas it's a windswept field in Munster and instead of roulette it's Carrick staring at a tactics board wondering how it all went wrong.

Will Martínez and Dorgu emerge from this camp as the spine of a revitalised United side? Will one of them be quietly listed on a plane to Milan before the week is out? Will anything of note happen at all? Sources close to sources tell me... they genuinely don't know. Nobody does. That's the magic of the training camp. It's Schrödinger's football event. Everything and nothing is happening simultaneously.

I'll be monitoring this situation from my sofa with a cup of tea and an absolutely unhinged level of suspicion. More as I get it. Or make it up. Same difference, really.