Saul, Havertz, Sterling, Mbappe, Werner are all coming!

Matt Stead

Saul, Havertz, Sterling, Mbappe and Werner are basically all on their way to the Premier League…

 

Is that the sound of a barrel being scraped?
‘Saul Niguez next club: Rio Ferdinand teases Manchester United fans with reply to cryptic transfer tweet’ – Evening Standard website.

‘Man Utd fans convinced Rio Ferdinand has dropped Saul Niguez transfer hint’ – Express website.

The ‘story’? One set of eye emojis in response to a seven-word tweet.

 

As you were
When the word ‘as’ is used as a conjunction, it is basically ‘used to indicate that something happens during the time when something else is taking place’.  There is an implication that the two things are simultaneous.

Unless, of course, you work for the Mirror website, in which case ‘as’ is ‘used to indicate that we have searched for some old quotes from this footballer on this subject that we can now use to hoover up search traffic’.

As in:

‘Raheem Sterling’s Man Utd admission as Man City star identified as transfer priority’

Yes. He ‘admitted’ that he was a boyhood Manchester United fan…over a bloody year ago.

As, my arse.

 

Role play
After Monday’s pure guesswork from The Sun‘s Alan Nixon about Kai Havertz playing on the left and Marcus Rashford through the middle for Manchester United comes Tuesday’s shameless efforts to drag some more clicks out of that guesswork.

‘Man Utd plan to give Kai Havertz new role if Ole Gunnar Solskjaer seals transfer’ – Daily Express website.

Jack Otway knows this is bollocks – he writes that ‘the new role would be surprising given he’s spent the majority of this season operating down the middle’ and even consults Wyscout to confirm – but he also knows that is one hell of a tantalising headline.

Equally tantalising is this…

‘Man Utd plan for Kai Havertz leaves room for Jadon Sancho and Marcus Rashford trio’ – Daily Star website.

We are told that ‘Manchester United have a bold plan for Bayer Leverkusen hotshot Kai Havertz’ as if that’s the most normal thing in the world, to take as gospel the flippant word of a Sun journalist that a club will ‘probably’ play a striker on the left.

Incidentally, we do believe that any Manchester United plan for Kai Havertz will leave room for Jadon Sancho and Marcus Rashford. But it will not involve the German – who has become the first player to score 35 Bundesliga goals before his 21st birthday – playing in a position he has not occupied for three years.

 

Smooth tip
The Daily Mirror’s north-east football correspondent Simon Bird probably did not expect to find himself writing the website’s most-read story on Monday when he wrote that ‘Alan Shearer has told Kylian Mbappe to light up the Premier League… at Newcastle United’. He presumably knew that Shearer was speaking with tongue firmly in cheek.

But then he probably did not expect this headline: ‘Alan Shearer tips Kylian Mbappe to make Premier League transfer.’

Perhaps we ought to send a dictionary the Mirror’s way because Shearer does not appear to have given ‘a prediction or piece of expert information about the likely winner of a race or contest’; he appears to have made a joke. Still, clicks.

 

The Sun, Liverpool and Werner: Five stories in six days
The Sun, May 28: ‘Liverpool ‘pull out of Timo Werner transfer talks’ with Klopp refusing to meet RB Leipzig’s £50m release clause’

The Sun, later on May 28: ‘Man Utd to have free transfer run at Timo Werner as Liverpool ‘pull out’ of £50m race for RB Leipzig striker’

The Sun, May 30: ‘Liverpool line up Ousmane Dembele as back-up option if they fail in £52m transfer deal for Timo Werner’

The Sun, May 31: ‘Timo Werner ‘willing to join Man Utd or Chelsea but only if Liverpool refuse to pay £49m RB Leipzig release clause’

The Sun, June 2: ‘Timo Werner to Liverpool transfer takes step forward as RB Leipzig boss gives up hopes of keeping star striker’

If you ‘step forward’ after you ‘pull out’, does that leave you back where you started?

 

Golden generation game
The Sun’s Dave Kidd writes that you could believe for ‘fleeting’ moments that Paul Gascoigne was the best midfielder in the world and then remarks that ‘you could not have said the same about any other English footballer in the past half-century’.

Not even in 2005 when Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard came second and third in the Ballon d’Or vote behind only Ronaldinho? Kidd certainly used to think they were decent.

 

Planes, trains and automobiles
John Cross, Daily Mirror: ‘Clubs could be ordered to take private planes to away games rather than a train or team coach.’

Sami Mokbel, Daily Mail: ‘Some are considering trains, provided they can book several carriages – or the entire train.’

Charlie Wyett, The Sun: ‘Some teams fear their players will be forced into 12-hour road trips to maintain social distancing.’

 

Colly flowers
Stan Collymore says that Liverpool fans being singled out as ‘potential behind-closed-doors busters is an absolute disgrace’ in his Daily Mirror column.

‘But if my suggestion that a one-mile cordon sanitaire is properly introduced then nobody would be able to get close to Anfield anyway.

‘Liverpool, like every other club, should play home and away as they scheduled to do and only if there’s an issue once the games start should we revisit that.’

It is literally seven days since he suggested that Premier League games should be played at QPR and other Championship clubs.

 

Bizarre ink
‘The Premier League’s coronavirus snoop squad have made the bizarre request for clubs to routinely wash their training ground gates’ – Sami Mokbel, Daily Mail.

How bizarre that clubs should be encouraged to wash something metal, on which coronavirus can live for up to three days; we know that because we read it in the Mail.

You know what is actually bizarre? Continually referring to inspectors charged with keeping a deadly virus at bay in football clubs as a ‘snoop squad’. That is weird as f***.