The Times reports that Antonio Conte and Roman Abramovich have had lunch every day this week, which to the Mill might indicate a healthy and amicable employer-employee relationship, or simply some regular early-afternoonical tummy-rumblage, but apparently actually means the Chelsea squad is about to be massively remodelled. It seems it has been decided that half the team that won the league two seasons ago are now irredeemably rubbish, and that Branislav Ivanovic, Nemanja Matic, Gary Cahill, Oscar and Cesc Fàbregas will thus be made available, and proper footballers brought in to replace them.
One of these upgrades could be Álvaro Morata, who remains on the radar at both Chelsea and Arsenal despite their failure to capture him in the summer. Back at Real Madrid the striker is yet to start a Champions League game, even if he has made the first XI for four of their six domestic league matches, and the English clubs hope he may be made available in the near future.
Whether Arsène Wenger will still be at Arsenal when that happens is suddenly open to debate, with the Frenchman apparently ready to agree to become England’s next permanent manager, according to the Star. He isn’t, however, ready to actually become England’s next permanent manager – that won’t happen until next summer at the very earliest, but he is apparently “interested in taking charge of the build-up to the 2018 World Cup”. Handily his Arsenal contract expires in 2017, so he would be officially up for grabs at the season’s end, though the Gunners are hurriedly drawing up a new two-year deal to keep him away from Wembley. Other than when Arsenal go to Wembley, obviously.
After yesterday’s news that Mesut Özil is to demand Jack Wilshere’s No10 shirt if he is to sign a new contract at the Emirates Stadium comes an update from the permacrocked Englishman’s predecessor in the jersey, Robin van Persie, who is preparing to move again after a year and a bit at Fenerbahce and has declared himself “open to everything … whether it’s in England, Turkey or wherever”. The ageing forward, now 33, also says that his children will “get a bigger say in where they’d like to live and be”, and will thus probably end up moving to Disneyland.
There’s no such thing as a secret these days. Take Ezri Konsa, Charlton’s 18-year-old centre-back, whose good form and bright future has been noticed not by only one top-flight club, nor even two, but by pretty much all of them. The young scout magnet has apparently been attracting representatives of Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea and both Manchester sides to the Addicks’ games this season.
Liverpool have also been eyeing up Solna’s 17-year-old striker Alexander Isak, who has inevitably been dubbed “the New Zlatan Ibrahimovic” by someone who should know better, because he is tall and Swedish. Their scouts have had to squeeze into the Friends Arena – not so hard really, given that Solna’s average attendance this season is 17,788 and their stadium can hold a little over 50,000 – alongside those of Bayern Munich, Barcelona, Real Madrid and – and it is a true indication of their new status that they are included in this really quite prestigious list – Leicester.
