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Hot Football Transfer Gossip: England ‘target Wenger’, Ozil ‘wants Real Madrid move’
The focus is on Steve Bruce again this morning as he considers whether to take his next big job. It’s a high profile role but it’s also beset with problems, and it doesn’t help that the previous incumbent left somewhat under a cloud. We’re talking, of course, about Derby County.
The Mirror reports that Brucie is “in the frame” to replace Nigel Pearson at Pride Park, but the most revealing part of this is that the managers being linked with the vacant Rams post are the same ones being tipped for the England job. That’s the level the national team is operating at right now.
It seems unlikely, therefore, that the Football Association’s attempt to lure Arsene Wenger to take a sip from the “poisoned chalice” will be successful.
The Mirror says FA chiefs will make “strong enquiries” to see whether the Frenchman is interested in joining them when his Arsenal contract expires in the summer. This, however, has prompted the Gunners to step up their own plans to offer Wenger a two-year extension.
Wenger has “left the door open” to taking the England job, according to the Daily Mail, by admitting that football is “full of surprises”. Except for the surprise of Arsenal ever making the Champions League quarter-finals, obviously.
In any case, Wenger would have to dislodge Gareth Southgate first. The Times reports that the former Middlesbrough coach, currently interim boss of the Three Lions, will be using his four matches in charge to “stake his claim for the job on a full-time basis”.
Despite Southgate insisting he didn’t want the job after Roy Hodgson resigned in the summer, the Times says his “perspective has changed” since then. We’d love to know exactly what perspective-altering events happened to Southgate in the two months between June and September - must have been one hell of a wild summer.
Most of today’s actual transfer gossip comes from countries that haven’t just sacked their national team manager.
Spanish website Don Balon reports that Arsenal and Chelsea will bid for Alvaro Morata “if he asks to leave Real Madrid”, while German paper Bild thinks Mesut Ozil could go in the opposite direction and would like to leave the Gunners and return to the Bernabeu.
Elsewhere, Man Utd, Man City, Liverpool, Arsenal and Chelsea are interested in 18-year-old Charlton defender Ezri Konsa (Mirror), Man Utd have taken 16-year-old Brazilian midfielder Matheus Marcosi on trial (Mail) and Robin van Persie says his children will have a “big say” in his next transfer move (Mail). FC Disneyland?
