Just a little one this morning, reader.
In all honesty, there isn’t a great deal to talk about and my fingers are suffering from frostbite having found myself in a London café early on a Friday morning.
Where is the Spanish sunshine? Ah, yes. In Spain, where I bloody well left it.
Anyway, it turns out I am not the only one having a moan in London. Oh, no.
Unai Emery is raging that he is only allowed to make loan signings this January.
Don’t panic though, Arsenal fans. Emery assures us that the club is working on a few targets – believed to be Barcelona’s Denis Suarez and Yannick Carrasco, formerly of Atletico Madrid and currently phoning it in somewhere in China.
Emery is also a big fan, still, of his former playmaker Ever Banega who continues to stroll around the Sevilla midfield with an elegance that you would be right to think might not work in the Premier League.
Emery’s not disappointed though, he understands the situation, apparently. So that’s OK then until he gets quizzed for not bringing Champions League football back to the Emirates.
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, loving his life as interim Manchester United manager, has said that those pesky rumours about Mauricio Pochettino are ‘there for a reason.’
Solskjaer has clearly called upon his mentor, Sir Alex Ferguson. For the Norwegian is having a dabble in some of those mind-games by telling the Poch he has done ‘a very good job’ at Tottenham and that he ‘understands’ why the Argentine is the favourite for the job he is currently looking after.
United face Tottenham this weekend having had five days of sun in Dubai and will be boosted by the fact that Paul Pogba ended up joining them after all and is fit to play at Wembley.
Yesterday, I wrongly suggested that Marko Arnautovic might be interested in the move to China because of the financial side of things. I was wrong. Through his agent, Arnautovic has corrected me and many others by imploring West Ham to accept the bid from a still unknown side in China so that the Austrian can ‘compete for titles.’ OK, he has a point. West Ham aren’t winning anything in the near future and the CSL title is the one most players want on the mantlepiece, after all.
Chelsea’s Alvaro Morata could be off to anywhere that might take him and Chelsea are linked, once again, to Callum Wilson for £50m. Wilson is young(ish) and English which must be great news for other young English Chelsea strikers. Like Tammy Abraham, for example.
Liverpool are as aware as the rest of us that if Dejan Lovren has to play too much football between now and the end of the season then Liverpool’s chances of silverware diminish drastically. Therefore they are looking, and their eyes are resting on Burnley’s James Tarkowski. Not at £50m though, surely?
José Mourinho has broken his silence. No, not on the Manchester United sacking but to rule himself out of the running at Benfica. As I said, slow news day.
