It appears Jack Wilshere is destined to return from Bournemouth to a place where fans fight among themselves and discord is palpable in the air. But it says here that it won’t be to Arsenal, his parent club, no. You see, West Ham are ready to bid £30m for the midfielder, scuppering any hopes Eddie Howe had of signing him on a permanent deal so that he can sit on the Vitality Stadium bench and be used as a kind of miniature 20-minute turbo sub at the end of Premier League matches. And the ambitious Hammers won’t stop there. They’ll also ask Chelsea if they have any plans to use Michy Batshuayi as anything more than an expensive Stamford Bridge ornament. If not, they’ll take him on loan for the whole of next season.
As for Chelsea, hacks in France say they are in talks with Alexis Sánchez about the possibility of making the mood at Arsenal about as cheery as your average Cormac McCarthy novel by switching north London for south west London. They’ll face stiff competition from PSG for the Chilean though – and maybe even Juventus – but apparently Sánchez would prefer to stay in London where his loyal dogs, Atom and Humber, are as happy as Arsenal fans were back in 2004.
Having just got Wilfred Ndidi playing with the midfield vim and vigour they have lacked since N’Golo Kanté upped sticks and left for Chelsea, Leicester now face a fight to keep the 20-year-old dynamo. Manchester United are licking their lips lasciviously and would like to instal him alongside Paul Pogba so that their £90m man doesn’t have to bother himself with any running. It’s so boring. Meanwhile, Arsenal … well Arsenal just need a midfielder who doesn’t approach every tackle as if they are competing in the luge.
Manchester United are bracing themselves for another fax-machine attack from Real Madrid for David de Gea. And if they lose the battle to keep their goalkeeper this time they will do exactly what the Mill does when it wants to find a juicy blackberry as tasty as the last one we ate. We’ll go back to the same bush to pick another. In this case Manchester United’s favourite bush is located between the sticks at Atlético Madrid, where they found De Gea six years ago. The 24-year-old Slovenian stopper Jan Oblak is ripe for plucking now but Atlético’s valuation of £85m might be an issue. But this is Ed Woodward and Manchester United we’re talking about.
Liverpool have been given renewed hope of signing twinkle-toed Bayer Leverkusen winger Julian Brandt after the player’s dad denied reports that his son has already signed a £10.7m deal to warm Bayern Munich’s bench for the foreseeable future. “It is fake news that Julian has agreed terms with Bayern,” Jürgen Brandt told Kicker magazine, using a little-used phrase. “Julian has never been in the situation where he had to – or wanted to – make a decision on his future.” Jürgen Klopp will ignore all this and encourage Brandt to foresee a future in which the German winger trains twice a day and slots clever little passes behind opposing defences for Sadio Mané to run on to. Klopp also has an eye on 2014’s James Rodríguez but it says here that the Real Madrid playmaker doesn’t have an eye on a move to Liverpool.
And Crystal Palace and West Brom are set to lob money the way of Crotone for their 25-year-old striker Diego Falcinelli, who is actually on loan at Sassuolo, and scoring for fun to help keep the Serie A team in the league while his parent club sink towards relegation to Serie B. Weird. But that’s the head-scratching world of modern football for you.
