Look who’s buying houses for his family now…

Sunni side down
Mediawatch is reluctant to show sympathy to anybody who works for The Sun, but spare a thought for Sun Sport night editor Sunni Upal, who exclusively wrote on the The Sun’s website about Chelsea opening talks with Eden Hazard about a new £300,000-a-week contract…

…only to see his story on the back page of The Sun newspaper with the byline of Carl Long, who does not actually exist.

Ouch.

 

It takes real Cutts
At least The Sun’s Chief Football Reporter Neil Ashton actually exists. And he has used his existence to pen a back-page exclusive for his newspaper detailing how ‘JOSE MOURINHO wants to kick off a massive summer spending spree by signing Eric Dier’. It’s a ‘TRANSFER EXCLUSIVE’.

Except, well, it’s not is it, Neil?

Because your lowly Sun colleague and online gubbins writer Daniel Cutts wrote this exact same story earlier this month. Here it is.

Then, Cutts wrote: ‘MANCHESTER UNITED boss Jose Mourinho is eyeing a sensational £35m move for Tottenham star Eric Dier. The United chief is a huge fan of the 23-year-old England midfielder and has watched him on a number of occasions.’

Ashton has changed the price from £35m to £40m and now he ‘has long been an admirer’ rather than a ‘fan’, but it is basically the same story. Only this time it’s on the back page and it’s a TRANSFER EXCLUSIVE. Oh to be in the old boys’ club…

Daniel and Sunni, sorry but your names are not down so you’re not coming in.

 

Bizarre notion of the day
Neil Ashton of The Sun on Marcus Rashford:

‘He is a work in progress, with Mourinho speaking to him recently about the off-field distractions that place a strain on young players.

‘Rashford, who is building an enormous new home in Cheshire for him and his family, has recently helped buy his sister Chantelle a new house.’

Buying houses for his family? Has he learned nothing from Raheem Sterling? No wonder he can’t buy a goal…

 

Spot the difference
From James Olley’s Evening Standard exclusive on Alexis Sanchez on Tuesday:

‘…the player’s representatives demanding his £130,000-a-week salary is doubled to bring him into line with the Premier League’s highest earners.

‘Relations between Sanchez and his team-mates have become strained in recent weeks with a training ground row partly behind manager Arsene Wenger’s decision to drop the Chile international to the bench for Arsenal’s 3-1 defeat at Liverpool earlier this month.’

From Ross Gregory in The Sun on Wednesday:

‘Sanchez’s representatives want to double his £13o,000 a week salary to bring him into line with the Premier League’s highest earners.

‘It was reported that relations between the 28-year-old and his team-mates have become strained after a training ground row partly led to Arsene Wenger’s decision to drop Sanchez for Arsenal’s 3-1 defeat at Liverpool earlier this month.’

Nobody’s even pretending anymore…

 

The evolution of a ‘story’
On Tuesday evening, Memphis Depay gave some pretty bland quotes about ‘keeping the faith’ which were filed by the Press Association.

But the MailOnline also had a picture of Depay’s new back tattoo so what could they do?

‘Memphis Depay urges Holland to ‘keep the faith’ as Lyon winger shows off new lion tattoo on his back during Italy loss’.

But wait a minute; those quotes really are bland. So by the time the story reaches the football homepage of MailOnline…

‘Depay shows off his incredible new lion ink.’

Football? What football?

 

Short people
Not that it’s a quiet day but the top story at 12pm on Wednesday on Sun football is that there are some quite small and some quite tall people who play in the Premier League.

We are promised ‘some surprise names at the bottom’, so imagine our shock when we found the names of Alexis Sanchez, N’Golo Kante, Santi Cazorla, Joe Allen, Manuel Lanzini, Nampalys Mendy, Pedro, Aaron Lennon, Nathan Dyer and Ryan Fraser; we thought they were all f***ing massive.

 

The question none of us were asking

And what would the table look like if our aunties all had balls like John Stones?

Of course, we still don’t know what a table would look like if each team got a goal for hitting the woodwork, because the Telegraph don’t give us a table – that would be just one click – they give us a 21-page gallery.

And the answer – predictably – is ‘slightly different’.

 

Ince by f**king Ince
Poor Jacqui Oatley has been called “darlin'” too many times to be offended by ridiculous middle-aged men like Paul Ince so it’s worth focusing instead on his views on video technology, as espoused on ITV4

“Getting decisions right takes the emotion out of the game…football is all about right and wrong decisions.”

Oddly, that’s not what he said back in 2013 when – while managing Blackpool badly – he received a five-match stadium ban for “violently shoving” a fourth official while repeatedly saying the words “I’ll knock you f**king out you c***”.

If only they’d had video technology, darlin’.

 

Curse of Chunky
Talking of ridiculous middle-aged men, Alan Pardew has been talking to The Times about what went wrong at Crystal Palace this season. And no, it’s not that they won only four times in 17 games.

Like the job interviewee asked to confess a fault who says “if anything, I work too hard”, Pardew has decided that he lost all those games at Palace because he was too loyal. Yes, that’s definitely it.

“Looking back, I sat down with Steve in the summer and we decided we wanted to take the club forward. We made changes but I definitely have the view we didn’t change the squad enough. We brought players in but I think we should have done more.”

It is at this point that we should remember that Crystal Palace spent £55m in the summer, comfortably the most they had ever spent in one transfer window, on five new first-team players.

“That was compounded when we thought we had good cover at left back, not thinking Pape Souaré would be in a car crash.”

Ah, the car crash. Who could have predicted the car crash? Who could have predicted that having just one specialist left-back might not be enough?

“Sometimes as manager you do get loyal to players. They kept us up, we got to the cup final. I couldn’t fault their attitude but we didn’t have a balanced team.”

So you got to the cup final and you just could not bring yourself to make too many changes. That damned loyalty.

Odd then that Pardew said this to Sky Sports in September:

“As a manager, you sometimes know when’s the right time for change and this summer was definitely it.

“With the backing of the chairman and new owner we have done that and have gone up a level I hope. We needed more strings to our bow…We are now more fluid.”

So in September, when you were winning football matches, you had made just the right amount of quite radical changes; but in March, after being sacked for not winning football matches, you had been too loyal and not made enough radical changes. We think we follow you.

We will leave the last word for Pardew…

“The players I’ve had, I think I’ve largely got the maximum out of them but maybe you can’t keep going for maximum. Maybe my loyalty gets in the way a little bit. I have been loyal to a fault with some. That’s just a trait I have. Something I have to keep an eye on.”

Nope; we don’t even have a punchline.

 

Recommended reading of the day
Anna Kessel on Britain’s first black female footballer
Paul Ansorge on the symbolism of Manchester United’s No. 7 shirt
Adam Smith studies the numbers of days lost to injury by PL clubs