The Mill assumes that Tottenham’s special team of data geeks must be responsible for today’s first bit of flim-flam. Because it’s a little eerie. You see it looks like someone, somewhere at White Hart Lane has run some numbers through a laptop and worked out that the player Spurs need to push them on to the next level is, erm, Harry Kane. Except they already have him. So instead they’ll try to nab the French Harry Kane, Alexandre Lacazette, from Lyon. He’s the swashbuckling young local lad who has plundered the same amount of goals, 24, as the English Harry Kane and who is knocking on the door of the national team’s starting XI. Analytics are fine and all that, but a little creativity in the market wouldn’t go amiss. What about a centre-back? They’ll have to stump up £28m for his services, mind. And we all remember how it worked out the last time Spurs paid that kind of money for a striker?
Which reminds the Mill that Tottenham will have to try and find some poor sap to take footballing Polyfilla Roberto Soldado off their hands. And Emmanuel Adebayor. Good luck with that one Mauricio!
Spurs aren’t the only north London team in the market for a rampant goalscorer. No, Arsenal would like to ease the workload on Olivier Giroud, perhaps by easing him out of the door and replacing him with Porto’s Jackson Martínez, who isn’t quite as easy on the eye as the suave Frenchman but who will be a lot busier in attack. It says here that £25.4m has been posted to the Estádio do Dragão, and bean-counters would be keen to accept given that Martínez is approaching 29 and will see his big-money value come to an end, Logan’s Run-style, shortly.
They’ll also try to stop Geoffrey Kondogbia from showing them up again in the Champions League by agreeing a £14.5m deal with Monaco and making the France international midfielder as torn as Natalie Imbruglia in 1997.
And still in France, Lamine Sane, has been taking a look at Liverpool’s midfield and reckons he’d quite like to elbow Joe Allen and Lucas Leiva out of the way and assume the role of Jordan Henderson’s special helper. “It is true that I have always been drawn to England,” trumpeted the Bordeaux captain. “As for a club – Liverpool. I have always said Liverpool, since my first ever interview. It is a club that I really like,” he added, before singing Poor Scouser Tommy, internally, to himself, even adding the ‘All You Need is Rush’ bit at the end.
But Brendan Rodgers has figured out that just having loads of nippy little attackers is all Liverpool need to be rampant Champions League-botherers again. So he’ll pillow-talk John W Henry into parting with £12m for Milan’s Stephan El Shaarawy and ignore the smoke signals from Bordeaux.
Atlético Madrid’s Diego Godin has been busy in the ear of Edinson Cavani and is believed to have persuaded his Uruguay team-mate that Madrid is a nicer place than Paris. PSG will want in the region of £40m for him in the summer, mind. Although it says here that Diego Simeone will be the Manchester City manager by then so who knows who will persuade the board to part with that kind of cash.
Real Madrid are going to Zola-Budd Manchester United out of the way in the race to sign right-back Danilo from Porto. But Louis van Gaal will dust himself off, look at his clipboard, and figure out that it was Dani Alves they wanted to sign all along. He’ll cost them nothing but huge wages when Barcelona tell the Brazil right-back he can do one at the end of the season.
Elsewhere, the brilliantly-monikered Godfred Donsah is attracting interest from Manchester City, Liverpool, Tottenham and Arsenal, so says his dreamy agent. The 18-year-old Cagliari midfielder has never played for Ghana, though, so there’s about as much chance of him getting a work permit as a 16-year-old promising striker from Mars.
And finally, Winston Reid, having been hot stuff in January and a banker for a big move to a Champions League club after failing to sign a new contract, is staying at West Ham.
