Man Utd to raise £200m to match six-year haul while Klopp ‘shows up’ Arteta
Man Utd have taken six years to raise around £200m in player sales but they’re about to match that in one summer, while Jurgen Klopp shows up Mikel Arteta.
The Benz
Mediawatch is always intrigued by the back pages of newspapers when absolutely sod all is going on in football. And no, Liverpool getting to another Carabao Cup final to play Chelsea again does not count. Where’s the narrative?
‘MANCHESTER UNITED have snubbed the chance to sign Karim Benzema due to the crazy cost of the deal,’ writes Neil Custis on the back page of The Sun. He’s claiming an ‘exclusive’ despite pretty much everybody on Football X dismissing the prospects of this deal days ago. This is only possible when your readers have an average age of 63.
Online, the capitals are rolled out as we are told that ‘Man Utd REJECT chance to sign Karim Benzema over sky-high wage demands with club careful to avoid FFP rule breaches’.
Are we supposed to be surprised that Manchester United REJECTED the chance to pay about £40m for a few months of a 36-year-old striker? Actually, the recent history of Manchester United and their transfer dealings suggests we probably should.
What’s amusing is to then see this ‘exclusive’ chopped and shopped elsewhere.
‘Man United ‘REJECT the chance to sign Karim Benzema over extortionate wage demands’ – as the club fear breaching FFP rules by signing 36-year-old £86m-a-year striker’ fart MailOnline, who parrot the ‘REJECT’ capitals because of course they do.
Penny for the thoughts of the Mail’s actual Manchester United correspondent who twice wrote on Wednesday that United are not interested in Benzema, writing that INEOS are moving in a ‘different direction’ away from giving ageing superstars massive wages.
Maybe he should have used more capitals. Or claimed an exclusive on common knowledge.
Investor wants influence shock!
The back page of the Daily Mail itself is an oddity as this is somehow deemed massive news:
The influence of Sir Jim Ratcliffe and his INEOS team will stretch beyond football operations, Manchester United staff have been told.
When the petrochemicals billionaire agreed to buy a 25 per cent stake in the club it was announced that his group would purely take control of matters on the field at Old Trafford.
Except that’s just not true. And was surely never practical. Why would anybody buy a 25% stake in a business that has revenues of over £600m a year and cede all business decisions to the majority owners?
When announcing the investment, Manchester United themselves said that ‘INEOS has accepted a request by the Board to be delegated responsibility for the management of the Club’s football operations’ but also – in the very next paragraph – that ‘the joint ambition is to create a world-class football operation building on the Club’s many existing strengths, including the successful off-pitch performance that it continues to enjoy’.
It doesn’t sound like they were ever going to ‘purely’ take control of football matters. It’s almost like there’s f*** all happening in football.
Fool-proof plan
And in the i, there is another Manchester United ‘exclusive’, that ‘Sir Jim Ratcliffe is plotting a £100m fire sale of Manchester United’s unwanted stars, starting with Mason Greenwood’.
First, we are eternally amused at the ‘plotting’ and ‘planning’ of club owners to somehow persuade clubs to pay exactly what they want for their unwanted players.
Second, who the hell thought that Manchester United were going to keep hold of Mason Greenwood? Or Scott McTominay? Or Hannibal Mejbri and Alvaro Fernandez?
What the i are ‘exclusively’ describing is a club wanting to sell three players currently on loan and another who is not in their first-team plans.
After the ‘£100m transfer plan’ earlier this week, Mediawatch is looking forward to a summer in which Manchester United will raise £200m from player sales.
For the record, that would roughly equal what they have raised in the last six summers combined. Seems legit.
The Art of finding a narrative
There we were thinking there was no real narrative from Liverpool’s advance to the Carabao Cup final with a draw v Fulham but…
Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp shows up Mikel Arteta after unearthing two ‘new signings’
The Mirror are absolutely bang on here; Arteta must be incredibly embarrassed as he watched Liverpool edge past Fulham with a team including Jarell Quansah and Conor Bradley because the Reds have a raft of injuries.
After all…
Arsenal boss Mikel Arteta felt he couldn’t afford to offer several of his academy starlets minutes in a Champions League group-stage dead-rubber at PSV Eindhoven, having already wrapped up top-spot.
Ethan Nwaneri, Lino Sousa and Reuell Walters all travelled but were unused substitutes in Holland. That is seemingly harsh, given there was zero at stake, particularly when you consider Liverpool’s emphatic 4-0 win at Bournemouth last Sunday was the fourth time they’ve fielded six players aged 21 or younger in a league match in their illustrious history.
Hmmm. They only actually started with two players aged 21 or younger v Bournemouth, and Liverpool were 3-0 up by the time three youngsters were introduced.
Oh and a small but undeniably pesky fact: The average age of Arsenal’s starting XI in the Premier League this season is exactly two years younger than Liverpool’s.
