Having given it scant regard for the best part of a decade Barcelona have finally decided to sort out their defence. Yes, you know, the one comprising Gerard Piqué and whoever else happens to be looking at Luis Enrique when he’s picking his team that sits about 12 yards outside the opposition penalty area. Yeah, that one. You see, according to Marca, Barça’s sporting director Robert Fernandez and the chief scout Urbano Ortega visited London this week to watch a number of players who would help prevent them having to work miracles at home to get through European Cup ties by not conceding a bucketful of goals in the first leg. First up, they went to the London Stadium, where their eyes were fixed on Cesar Azpilicueta, Marcos Alonso and Nemanja Matic.
Given that Chelsea won 2-1 against West Ham, The Mill’s guessing that boxes were ticked and knowing nods were shared while sipping Bovril together. And then on Tuesday, for some reason, they took their growing Bromance to the Emirates, where they perhaps ticked the box confirming that Hector Bellerín can run fast but not fast enough to avoid a date with Dr Humiliation. The sticking point with signing any of these players, though, is their wages. The plucky little Catalonians just might not be able to find the spare change necessary to make their London-based targets feel wanted enough.
Another team that have been playing with a makeshift defence on and off this season are Liverpool. But Jürgen Klopp is not immediately going to buy a left-back and centre-half, no, he’s going to try to replace one of the two players in his back four who usually play in their preferred position. Klopp wants to remove Nathaniel Clyne and insert a sexy upgrade in Danilo, the Real Madrid right-back who hasn’t played all that much since signing from Porto in 2015. They’ll have stiff competition from Juventus, though, who are willing to meet Real’s £21m valuation and won’t have to fight to the death to qualify for the Champions League like Liverpool will.
It says here that reports in Italy suggest Manchester-based officials met with Napoli’s Belgian trickster Dries Mertens in a Naples hotel lobby between 9am and 11am sometime this week to discuss a potential move. Now, quite why they held those discussions somewhere so public and for so long perhaps suggests that either the food is great in said hotel or Merten’s agent wanted people, perhaps even Napoli people, to get wind of his client’s itchy feet and desire to earn a bit of more coin before he hits 30. Ah, here we go, fresh reports in suggest Merten’s agent has made it clear that his client would not turn down Barcelona should their cuddly scouting duo Fernandez and Ortega fancy sampling the local cuisine in southern Italy.
Bacary Sagna has played far more games for Manchester City than The Mill ever thought he would. And he’s won actual trophies too. But, at 34, Pep Guardiola has decided it is time to let the right-back run free back to from whence he came. Well, London. Slaven Bilic reckons he could get another year out of the French full-back at West Ham.
And Douglas Costa’s people have said the Bayern Munich forward might fancy a switch to Juventus. Yeah, he probably wants a new contract.
