Despite having a forward line richer than four gold-plated deep fried Mars bars, Zinedine Zidane wants more! Ideally, someone who knows the city of Madrid, has recent experience of getting one over Barcelona and who has enough self-assuredness to share a pitch – and dressing room – with Cristiano Ronaldo’s underpants and ego. So, step forward Sergio Agüero, the Manchester City squad player who appears to be back in the good books with Pep Guardiola. At 28, Real Madrid reckon he has one big move left in him and may offer him the moon on a stick and a shiny white kit to come and play for them. The snag is, that City’s obscenely wealthy owners could give him many more moons on sticks, a couple of planets and a galaxy or two to keep the potent little Argentinian at the Etihad. Real Madrid are also banned by Fifa from buying anyone for the next two transfer windows. But, as Barcelona have so adeptly shown in the past, if you just go about your business with two fingers in your ears shouting out “Na, na, na, na, na, we’re not listening!” you will get exactly what you want anyway.
Despite having a new manager with fresh ideas, Chelsea will continue with a trend popularised by José Mourinho – that of buying back players the club let leave for peanuts for the price of a small island. This time, they want Eden Hazard’s younger brother, Thorgan Hazard, to make his way back to Stamford Bridge from Borussia Mönchengladbach for the princely sum of £13m (his buyback fee, no less), despite the fact they let his contract run down and waved him off to Germany for nowt in 2014. It’s called doing ‘a Matic’ and helps ward off rival clubs who are certain they can’t compete with such madness.
Elsewhere, Liverpool will go back to Schalke looking for another freebie defender to follow Joël Matip to Anfield. Jürgen Klopp has his beady eye trained on Sead Kolasinac, a left-back who would probably stand a good chance of being first-choice because he isn’t Albert Moreno and isn’t a right-footed midfielder. He’s known as ‘The Tank’, which isn’t the best nickname for a player hoping to join the ranks of Klopp’s cultured young bucks, but at least it isn’t ‘Millie’ the nickname that makes James Milner sound like a pet rabbit.
Another club making a move for a full-back are West Ham United, who are weighing up the highly original idea of signing Jinkin’ Carl Jenkinson on loan from Arsenal. It’s an annual tradition, and just because they’ve moved house, they’re not going to give it up. Slaven Bilic also wants Lamine Koné to join his defensive ranks, despite the Sunderland centre-back’s form – and enthusiasm – having fallen off a cliff somewhere on the north-east coast this season.
Manchester United scouts apparently watched Gonçalo Guedes scuttle around Benfica’s midfield during their 1-0 defeat of Dynamo Kyiv on Tuesday, the kind of laboured win that Mourinho would dearly love to oversee more regularly at Old Trafford. Guedes played a so-so role in orchestrating it so those scouts haven’t been entirely put off. But his £52m release clause may be even too much for a man as keen on making ridiculous decisions as Ed Woodward.
It’s getting cold isn’t it? So Tim Sherwood is ready to strap on his warmest gilet and come to QPR’s rescue when they show Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink the door.
And finally, John Terry will be offered £8m a year to pull serious-looking faces and point a lot in Guangzhou Evergrande’s defence. He is already a club ambassador, which is a bit odd considering he is a Chelsea player. Well, for now anyway.
