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Gossip: Man City 'confident of landing £637m Isco', Coutinho is 'No1 PSG target', Dyche 'edges towards Everton'
Pep Guardiola is a very self-assured man, and Manchester City are an exceedingly wealthy club, but their latest transfer target would appear to smack of over-confidence. According to the Express, City “think” are they are going to sign Isco.
A year ago, this would have not been such a lofty aspiration. The playmaker was confined to the fringes of the Real Madrid first team and being touted to every club in England’s top six.
Since then, he has become of one of Zinedine Zidane’s key players and signed a new contract with a release clause of £637m.
A prohibitive price tag to most football teams, but City apparently haven’t batted an eyelid.
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Despite Isco being “rewarded for his impressive displays” and also “having no intention of moving to England”, the Express says Guardiola “feels it is only a matter of time before he makes the move to Etihad Stadium”.
Why??
Is this the kind of outlandish hubris borne of a five-point cushion at the top of the Premier League table? For City’s title rivals, hopefully so, because the league leaders seem to be getting a bit cocky.
Either that or Sheikh Mansour’s Abu Dhabi United Group have just struck some especially lucrative arms deals and promised Pep a £5 trillion transfer kitty for next summer.
PSG want Coutinho as their next Galactico
Speaking of big- spending Arabs, Paris Saint-Germain have reportedly identified the man they will splurge a silly amount of money on next season. It’s Philippe Coutinho.
The Sun says the Liverpool midfielder is PSG’s “No1 target” and they will attempt to beat Barcelona to the Brazilian’s signature.
The Reds have already proved rather stubborn in their efforts to keep the 25-year-old at Anfield, but PSG are “confident they can twist Jurgen Klopp’s arm and convince him to part ways with Coutinho”. Perhaps they are planning to literally twist his arm, like until it really, really, really hurts.
In happier news for the Reds, RB Leipzig have apparently “paved the way” for Klopp to snap up their striker Timo Werner by “ruling out” selling the 21-year-old to Bayern Munich (Mirror).
If you read the quotes from Leipzig president Oliver Mintzlaff, what he actually says is that there has been “no enquiry” from Bayern. But the Mirror would never let the facts get in the way of a good headline.
It’s not like their readers will notice. There’s a poll result at the bottom of that page showing that 25 per cent of them think Liverpool will win the 2017/18 Premier League, ahead of Manchester City (24%) and just behind Man Utd (28%). Lols.
Elsewhere, in manager gossip, Burnley’s players are concerned that manager Sean Dyche is set to quit Turf Moor for Everton (Times), the Clarets will look to replace the ginger genius with former Toffees boss (and former ginger genius) David Moyes (Sun) and unemployed gaffer Alan Pardew has emerged as a contender for the Rangers job (Scottish Daily Mail). Pards is probably doing a little dance in his living room about this right now.
