Man Utd get green light over club-record striker signing after shocking Weghorst revelation

The ‘Man Utd players driving cars’ goldmine is yet to be fully excavated but the biggest possible Old Trafford news comes from a club-record signing boost.

Google drive
After the groundbreaking journalism that was ‘man leaves house and drives car he owns’ earlier in the week, The Sun website have clearly decided that they want some of the MailOnline‘s motor-based Man Utd click goldmine.

‘Man Utd star Antony’s £337,000 Lamborghini Aventador taken away in back of recovery truck,’ reads one headline to a story which collapses under the sheer weight of non-information. Why was it taken away? Dunno. But at one stage we are told that while Antony ‘can regularly be seen driving in and out of training at Carrington in the striking sports car,’ he is ‘currently without it and may have to make other arrangements’.

Just stick the retail price in the headline and wing the rest.

Then comes another classic of the genre: ‘Wout Weghorst drives to Man Utd training after ‘This Is Anfield’ sign storm’.

Man turns up for work. At least tell us how much his sodding car cost.

Straight from the horst’s mouth
Chief drivers of both automobiles and traffic that they are, Weghorst and Marcus Rashford are cleverly combined into this intriguing Daily Mirror website headline:

‘Marcus Rashford details Man Utd squad’s reaction to Wout Weghorst’s first goal’

Were they annoyed? Did they mock him over the price of his car? Did they call him a Scouse b*stard? Let’s see…

‘Marcus Rashford has revealed the Manchester United squad were delighted for Wout Weghorst after the Netherlands inernational [sic] bagged his second goal for the club on Thursday night – his first at Old Trafford.’

‘Players happy that teammate scored’ is yet another huge revelation, JUST DAYS after a very small subset of Man Utd supporters were being performatively stupid.

To the Victor
There might not be many more games left for Weghorst, whose Man Utd loan runs to the end of the season with no option to make it permanent. He has been a short-term solution to the ongoing issue of a lack of centre-forward options.

The Manchester Evening News have hitched their wagon to Victor Osimhen with the official seal of approval: talking about ‘dream’ shirt numbers.

‘Victor Osimhen could get dream Manchester United shirt number after transfer on one condition,’ is the headline, the ‘one condition’ presumably being that Man Utd can beat every other club interested in signing a player who would surely represent a club-record transfer.

‘The former Lille man recently admitted that it is his ‘dream’ to play in the Premier League, meaning United’s prospects of bringing him to Old Trafford in the summer have been possibly bolstered,’ the story pretends, before getting into the nuts and bolts of Osimhen’s ‘dream’ number.

‘Currently, the Nigerian international wears the No.9 shirt for Napoli – a number that he has worn ever since joining the Serie A table-toppers in July 2020 from Lille. He has also worn it for several years on the international stage, meaning it is clearly a preference of his.’

Or that he is a starting centre-forward. Osimhen wore 18 at Wolfsburg, 45 with Charleroi and 16, 12 and 7 during his time at Lille, as well as 13 and 21 for Nigeria. The bloke has been wearing his ‘dream’ shirt number for less than half of his professional career.

But what of this ‘one condition’ which will decide whether he gets to wear it or not?

‘At the moment, the No.9 shirt is occupied at United by forward Anthony Martial.’

So Osimhen’s ‘dream’ number is one he has had for less than half of his career, and he can get it as long as Man Utd sell the current holder of it. Might as well get those shirts printed now.

Just desserts
‘Ten Hag’s United team just needed to win here. He of all people did not deserve what his players served up for him in losing 7-0 at the home of the greatest enemy of all at the weekend’ – Ian Ladyman, Daily Mail.

There were certainly other individuals far more at fault but not sure it can ever be said that a manager ‘did not deserve what his players served up for him,’ as if he was entirely blameless for a 7-0 defeat.

Captain slog
BT Sport pundit Paul Scholes is unimpressed with the captaincy credentials of Bruno Fernandes, concluding that someone “with less emotion might be better”.

Coming from someone who was skippered by the notoriously tranquil, pacifying influence that was Roy Keane, he really ought to know that “your captain has to be an influence, a leader, calming down characters like him”.

For Evra and Evra
‘Evra explains why he’d always pick Ronaldo over Messi’ – Daily Mirror website.

Spoiler: it’s because he played with one of them for three years.

Hotch Poch
Mediawatch particularly enjoyed The Sun website‘s take on the Spurs manager situation, as they reveal: ‘How Tottenham could line up next season under Mauricio Pochettino after major transfer overhaul’. And they really ought to know.

Well apparently Spurs will spend £223.1m in one summer under Pochettino – £40m on David Raya, £98.1m on Alessandro Bastoni and Marc Guehi, £25m on Alex Scott and £60m on Alexis MacAllister – which is more than they gave him in six transfer windows from January 2017 to summer 2019. Can’t wait to see that.

Right about now I’m 50-50
‘Conte cannot help but throw his toys out of the pram as he has not got results, but could yet get Spurs into the top four; it must be 50-50 between Tottenham and Liverpool’ – John Cross, Daily Mirror.

Newcastle are four points behind Spurs with two games in hand. Brighton are seven points behind with three games in hand. Brentford are seven points behind with two games in hand. Fulham are in the middle of that menagerie.

It is difficult to be exact in terms of numbers and probabilities with all those variables, but one thing is certain: it ain’t 50-50.