The noise you can hear this morning is that of the Tottenham Hotspur fans screaming, “Don’t go Poch, don’t leave us!” That’s right, having been rocked by the resignation of Zinedine Zidane, Real Madrid have waited no time at all in making it know that they want Mauricio Pochettino to no doubt not match up to the standards set by the French legend.
You might think why on earth would the Poch want to leave Tottenham when they have a brand new stadium ready, allegedly, for the start of next season? Why go and manage Bale, Ronaldo and Ramos when he can continue nurturing Kane, Alli and, er, Dier? Why go and get money to spend when he has become so adept at managing net spend? Ah yes, because Real Madrid are Real Madrid and Tottenham are Tottenham.
Pochettino signed a new 5-year-deal last week which is said, admittedly by Spurs, not to include any kind of release fee at all and certainly doesn’t have a clause allowing the Poch to speak to any bigger clubs like Arsenal or Real Madrid.
The Maurizio Sarri/Napoli/Chelsea love triangle is curious. Even though Carlo Ancelotti has been brought in, Sarri has not been released by Napoli meaning the greedy so and sos are not allowing him just to waltz off to Chelsea who are yet to sack Antonio Conte. No, Napoli want £7m for a coach they will not be needing next season and Chelsea are showing remarkable restraint. Mind you, the days of spending money at Stamford Bridge might well be over considering Roman has mothballed all plans to make the stadium a lot bigger, nicer and probably more expensive. Damn visas. It’s not often you hear the words ‘constructive dismissal’ being bandied around in football, but that’s the line Sarri’s lawyers are believed to be toeing.
Everton have finally got their man and that man is Marco Silva. Yes, it is six months later than everyone wanted but hey, good things and all that. He has been told to play attractive football next season which pretty much guarantees that Wayne Rooney is off to DC United in MLS.
In a world where you can put two and two together, it makes perfect sense that the reason Jose Mourinho was watching a friendly between Russia and Austria was because he has the hots for West Ham’s Marko Arnautovic. £50m is the crazy price tag being quoted which seems a lot seeing that he only turned up for West Ham after David Moyes took over.
Finally today, and boy are we scraping around, Tottenham are looking to persuade Pochettino to stay by buying him Florian Thauvin from Marseille. Yes, the lad who bombed at Newcastle. That isn’t going to work, Mr Levy.
