Louis van Gaal, such great friends with Ryan Giggs that they sit down together and watch The Class of 92 on DVD every evening, has grand plans for Manchester United. He is going to sign Fluminese’s Kenedy, the new Neymar apparently, for£5.7m and probably play him at right-back and then he’s going to sign Arturo Vidal for £14m from Juventus and use him as a security guard at the training ground. Then he’s going to plan a holiday with Giggsy, because the pair of them are famous friends.
Arsenal and Liverpool are set to stage a medieval re-enactment in an attempt to battle it out for the Juventus striker Álvaro Morata. The Spaniard is available. Southampton are going to take Morgan Schneiderlin, a target for Arsenal and Tottenham, for a candle-lit dinner and tell him how much he means to them. Then they’re going to get down to business and dump a bumper contract on the table. Chelsea have agreed a £2.3m deal for the Romanian youngster, Cristian Manea. The 17-year-old is going to be ace for Wolfsburg after completing a £47m move to the German side in a couple of years. We call it the De Bruyne Principle.
Matija Nastasic is having such a time of it at Schalke that he wants to make his loan move from Manchester City permanent. And why not? City have Eliaquim Mangala and Martín Demichelis.
Tottenham are after Málaga’s Ignacio Camacho. The Mill has racked its brain
for two minutes and has come to the conclusion that it has nothing funny to
say about that. Camacho is a midfielder! Will he be as good as Etienne
Capoue and Paulinho? Ha! Ha! Ha! Chelsea are planning a swoop for the Real Madrid centre-back Raphaël Varane, who will play a starring defensive midfield role in next year’s 1-0 victory over Arsenal in the FA Cup final.
