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Hot Football Transfer Gossip: Mourinho ‘refuses to sell Jones to Arsenal’, West Ham ‘target Remy’

The renewal of rivalries between Jose Mourino and Arsene Wenger in a new context is something we can all look forward to this season. But after the entertaining public slanging matches and a fight on the touchline, this long-running soap opera might be starting to get a bit weird. Apparently, the squabbling managers are now involved in some kind of love triangle involving Phil Jones.

The Metro reports that Mourinho is refusing to let Jones - a player who is he actively trying to offload - move to Arsenal because he doesn’t want Wenger to take an ounce of pleasure from life.

Whether Wenger would actually take any pleasure from having Jones in his team is debatable, but Jose is not even willing to take the risk and will not do business with Wenger whoever the player is. Even if it means he has to continue looking at Jones’ unhappy mug on the training ground for the next year while paying his wages.

The latest setback in Wenger’s increasingly desperate defender hunt has left him indiscriminately pursuing other players who can play centre-back, such as Newcastle’s Chancel Mbemba (Bleacher Report) and Bayer Leverkusen’s Omer Toprak (Star).

West Ham’s search for a striker has been just as fraught, so much so that the Hammers are now said to be considering a loan deal for Chelsea’s Loic Remy (Sky Sports). That’s after manager Slaven Bilic revealed he personally pulled the plug on a move for AC Milan’s Carlos Bacca because he didn’t want to “drag” the player to east London (Express).

Southampton are fed up with selling players for record amounts and are finally going to buy one for a record amount instead, with the Mirror reporting that Saints are set to spend £20m on Lille’s 22-year-old attacking midfielder Sofiane Boufal. The last time the club broke their transfer record was to sign Dani Osvaldo for £15m three years ago, so let’s hope this works out better than that did.

Sunderland manager David Moyes is stepping up and showing the rest of the league his transfer market muscle by launching a £7m bid for Sevilla midfielder Vicente Iborra (Talksport) and a loan deal for Atletico Madrid’s former Liverpool defender Javier Manquillo (Sky Sports). Be afraid.

Elsewhere, Stoke are set to sign another legendary Liverpool defender Mamadou Sakho on loan (Telegraph), Tottenham are interested in Bayer Leverkusen’s 22-year-old Turkish midfielder Hakan Calhanoglu (Mail) and free agent Hal Robson-Kanu is set to wait until transfer deadline day to choose his new club as he aims to squeeze literally every last pound out of those couple of goals he scored for Wales at the Euros (South Wales Evening Post).

@darlingkevin