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Hot Football Transfer Gossip: Guardiola ‘transfer ban’, Carrick, Wanyama, Batshuayi
Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City summer shopping list has until now resembled a seemingly limitless collection of the world’s best players, with no name too fanciful to be put on it. But it seems some rules are being put in place. According to the Star, City’s incoming manager has been “banned” from signing players from his current employers Bayern Munich.
This sounds like quite a serious setback given that Pep likes to craft teams in his own image, and has spent three seasons moulding Bayern’s squad to his liking. It means City will not be able to sign the likes of Thiago Alcantara, Mario Gotze, Arturo Vidal, Arjen Robben and Robert, Lewandowski, all players that the Star claims Guardiola would like to take with him. Further investigation reveals that the Bayern transfer ban is based on a “verbal agreement” with the club. Oh, that doesn’t matter then.
Manchester United have their owner transfer issues, namely that they splurged £320m in the past three seasons and ended up with nothing to show for it. So the Sun reports that the club are set to “overhaul their player recruitment structure”. And about time too. Except the man who will apparently be leading this overhaul is “Red Devils bigwig” Ed Woodward - the man who bought all those players for £320m. So if this overhaul is as thorough as the Sun makes it sound, Woodward could end up sacking himself. Could get ugly.
One of United’s few blameless individuals over this period has been Michael Carrick, but he could be one of those leaving Old Trafford in the summer. The Mirror reports that Arsene Wenger wants to take Carrick to Arsenal when his contract expires in the summer and team him up in midfielder with £25m-rated Southampton midfielder Victor Wanyama.
West Ham and Tottenham are battling it out to sign Marseille’s also £25m-rated striker Michy Batshuayi, says the Mirror. Spurs are confident the promise of Champions League football will tip the balance in their favour, while the Hammers think the 22-year-old Belgian will prefer to join them because he is friends with former Marseille midfielder Dimitri Payet. But that’s a bit like saying Batshuayi likes cats so if we get a cat then maybe he will sign for us.
Another one of Belgium’s Hot Football Transfer Gossip favourites, Gent striker Laurent Depoitre, will have plenty of admirers present when his side take on Wolfsburg in the Champions League on Wednesday night. According to the Stoke Sentinel, scouts from Arsenal, Man Utd, Man City, Tottenham, Leicester City, Crystal Palace, Aston Villa, Everton, West Ham, Southampton, West Brom and Sunderland will all be at the game watching Depoitre, as well as their counterparts from Stoke. Which begs the question, what makes the scouts from Chelsea, Bournemouth, Norwich, Swansea, Newcastle, Liverpool and Watford so special that they don’t have to bother going?
Finally, the Mirror reveals that the Hornets are resigned to losing Odion Ighalo to either Arsenal or Man Utd in the summer and have lined up 20-year-old Granada striker Isaac Success as his replacement. With a name like that, he has already set himself up to be the biggest flop in Premier League history.
