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Gossip: PSG 'test Arsenal with £70m Alexis bid', Neymar 'says goodbye to Barcelona team-mates', Real Madrid 'target Rashford'

Rashford, Sanchez and Neymar - where will they end up?
Rashford, Sanchez and Neymar – where will they end up?

One good thing about spending £196m on Neymar, as Paris Saint-Germain are reportedly on the verge of doing, is that it makes everything else suddenly seem very cheap, even if it isn’t.

It’s like going on holiday to Norway and spending £9 for beers, then coming home and drinking five £5.25 pints at Gatwick airport – just because it feels like a bargain (Hot Football Transfer Gossip has never done this, obviously).

But in PSG’s case, rather than spending their loose change on getting drunk, they are going to spend it on getting Alexis Sanchez.

READ MORE: Gossip – Barcelona ‘close in on Coutinho as Neymar looks 95 percent to leave the Nou Camp’

READ MORE: Chelsea sign Morata for club record £70m

READ MORE: Is it time for Walcott and Wilshere to leave?

The Mirror reports that the French moneybags are set to “test Arsenal’s insistence” that the Chilean is not for sale by lodging a £70m bid for him – topped up with a £400,000-a-week wage offer.

Crazy money for a player with one year left on his contract, perhaps, but it’s all relative. Compared to Neymar, it sounds quite a reasonable price. Maybe if the Gunners are lucky PSG will pay them £65m for Theo Walcott too.

Further fanning the flames of Sanchez’s potential move to Paris, the Sun claims that the 28-year-old was recently spotted checking in to the city’s five-star Royal Monceau Raffles hotel.


Not only is this a hotel with a rather silly name, it is also allegedly the place where PSG bigwigs conduct their transfer business.

The Sun says PSG forward Jese Rodriguez stayed there for “a number of months” last year. So what further proof do you need?

As for Neymar, the Mail reports that he has edged closer to his departure from Barcelona after “saying goodbye” to a “select group of team-mates”.

The implication here being that there are some team-mates he won’t bother saying goodbye to because he doesn’t like them that much. That’ll be Messi then.

Neymar lined up his best mates to say goodbye to...
Neymar lined up his best mates to say goodbye to…

It’s all a bit of a concern for Real Madrid, with Barca allegedly keen to spend their imminent Neymar windfall on Kylian Mbappe.

But Zinedine Zidane appears to have acted swiftly to snuff out that possibility, with the Sun claiming that Madrid have “agreed terms” with the Monaco teenager and are “confident” of signing him for £120m.

Alternatively, the Mirror suggests (via Spanish chancers Diario Goal) that Zidane has lined up Manchester United’s Marcus Rashford in case the Mbappe move falls through.

Elsewhere, Barca have warned Philippe Coutinho that they will move for Dortmund’s Ousmane Dembele if Liverpool keep rejecting bids for the Brazilian (Sun), Swansea have launched an ambitious bid for Arsenal midfielder Jack Wilshere (Telegraph) and Leicester goalkeeper Kasper Schmeichel has insisted that he is 100 per cent “fully committed” to the Foxes (Mirror) and will remain so until Man Utd try to buy him.

@darlingkevin