Man Utd to spend their £20m striker budget on £60m Hojlund as Arsenal prepare to sell SIX stars
Manchester United have only £20m left to buy a striker and are going to spend £60m of that on Rasmus Hojlund while there’s bad news for Arsenal…
Maths with The Sun
Headline from The Sun today
Andre Onana flies in to complete Man Utd transfer TODAY… but deal leaves Ten Hag with just £20m to spend on striker
Elsewhere in The Sun today
Erik ten Hag will now turn his full attention to the capture of Atalanta’s Rasmus Hojlund.
The Italian club initially demanded a whopping £86m for the 6ft 3in Danish striker, who has played just 87 senior games and scored nine goals in 32 appearances last season.
But the Old Trafford outfit are growing confident they can get the price down to around £60m including add-ons for the 20- year-old.
Good to talk
Sorry about this, but we’re back on weird quote marks in headlines again. This one from The Sun is just inexplicable.
TRANSFER NEWS LIVE: Bayern hold Kane ‘talks’, Premier League battle for Diaby, Alba set to join Messi at Inter Miami
They have held talks. Talks have been held. Nobody is in any doubt that Spurs and Bayern and Kane are in talks. What is in doubt is the outcome of those talks. It’s not a quote, it’s not a concept that you might want to sort of cagily distance yourself from, it’s not an idea people won’t grasp. Why are those scare quotes there? Bayern hold Kane talks. Done. Accurate. Sorted.
It’s obviously not really a big deal, but it drives us ‘insane’.
Shining stars
Grim tidings for Arsenal from The Sun, who reveal that ‘SIX stars are set to leave the Gunnners this summer’ before Mikel Arteta can get his hands on any more money to spend having only been allowed a measly £200m to improve his squad thus far.
Who are these SIX stars then? Kieran Tierney we’ll concede is a good if injury-prone full-back, but one we’d probably stop short of calling an Arsenal star. What about the rest of this heavenly sextet constellation?
Cedric Soares, Nicolas Pepe, Albert Lokonga, Nuno Tavares and Rob Holding could also be heading out.
Words just don’t mean anything anymore, do they?
Bayern large
Bayern Munich won a pre-season friendly 27-0 yesterday. It’s not that surprising – it’s not even the first time it’s happened. This is the third time in recent years they’ve played a game against local ninth-tier opponents FC Rottach-Egern and while this was the biggest of their wins in those three games, the other two did end 20-2 in 2018 and 23-0 the following year.
It is, quite clearly, a game from which you can learn absolutely nothing about anything or anyone. Bayern Munich, the best team in Germany and one of the best in the world, are much better than a team that, in England, would roughly be at Combined Counties Premier or Eastern Counties Premier level. It is quite literally just a bit of fun, that Bayern take very seriously every time which only makes it funnier. There are no conclusions to be drawn here.
So obviously, conclusions have been drawn. ‘Sadio Mane’s face says it all’ offers the Mirror after he inexplicably failed to wildly celebrate scoring the 27th goal in the final minute.
Better yet from the Express who reckon ‘Marcel Sabitzer sends message to Man Utd after five-goal haul in 27-0 Bayern win’. Yes, and that message is that he would be tremendously useful if Man United find themselves in a spot of bother against, say, Banstead Athletic at any point next season.
Marcel Sabitzer sent Manchester United a reminder of his abilities as he enjoyed a memorable evening in Bayern Munich’s first pre-season friendly on Tuesday evening. The Bundesliga champions beat FC Rottach-Egern 27-0 with Sabitzer one of three players to score five goals.
Don’t mention the other players to score five goals, lads! You’re playing this down.
It’s almost like United may well have a perfectly good memory of his abilities from his 11 goalless appearances in the Premier League last season. Which might be slightly more relevant than scoring five goals from inside the six-yard box in a training rout against amateurs.
They’re not alone, though.
‘Man Utd fans beg ‘bring him in’ after loan star scores five in pre-season clash’ reckon The Star having found three people very obviously joking (and not in any way begging) on Twitter.
The Sun go even further still, with the bolder claim that ‘Man Utd fans all want loan flop back as he nets FIVE goals to lead team to stunning 27-0 pre-season win’.
All? All Man Utd fans want him back? Or ‘Four Man Utd fans make same joke on Twitter’?
If four people constitutes all that’s left of Manchester United’s fanbase, then The Sun have massively buried the lede here. They’re not fucking about with those protests.
Forget me not
We’ve already had our fun with Spurs’ vast array of potential Like A New Signings, but the Express have gone there for real.
Tottenham boss Ange Postecoglou can save Daniel Levy millions by keeping £67m forgotten duo
Giovani Lo Celso and Destiny Udogie are said duo, and both were impressive in the second half of the defeat to West Ham. We’ll also give the Express their dues for not pretending pre-season results matter, focusing on the encouraging elements of Spurs’ performance rather than the SHOCK result as Hammers STUN Spurs that others went with.
And Lo Celso’s possible uses in a squad that lacks any other obvious back-up to James Maddison in the No. 10 role are obvious. There is an undeniable possibility there that a Spurs career that appeared to be over could have a new lease of life.
Tagging Udogie in alongside him as part of a ‘forgotten duo’ is a nonsense, though.
Lo Celso’s Spurs career has gone wildly wrong and could now get back on track. That’s classic forgotten man territory, right there.
But Udogie? His Spurs career is precisely where it was always planned to be. He signed from Udinese last summer, was promptly loaned back for a year to continue his development and now at 20 years old is all set for a spot in Spurs’ first-team squad. Not much of the last 12 months has gone entirely to plan at Spurs, but Udogie’s path is an undoubted exception. Some fans and hacks might have forgotten about him, but Spurs absolutely hadn’t.