Ruben Amorim has made a Manchester United transfer ‘reveal’ that you, dear reader, will simply fail to ever believe. There might be no point even trying.
Liverpool are also ‘reaching transfer agreements’ left, right and centre…
Bone of contention
Welcome to ‘How to sell a footballer fracturing their little toe by stubbing it on a door‘, presented by the MailOnline:
‘Cole Palmer suffers ‘freak accident’ to leave him with broken bone, ruling him out of Chelsea’s big run of games vs Burnley, Barcelona and Arsenal’
It is absolutely technically right so fair play, but doesn’t half evoke thoughts of him having his hand crushed in a workplace mishap or some such.
Reach for the stars
See if you can spot the new headline trend the Liverpool Echo have landed upon over the last couple of days…
‘Antoine Semenyo agreement reached as pundits say same thing about Liverpool bid’
The ‘agreement reached’ is between Darren Bent and Charlie Austin, who both believe Antoine Semenyo to be a quite good player Liverpool should be interested in.
‘Marc Guehi Liverpool transfer agreement reached after Jamie Carragher plea’
The ‘transfer agreement reached’ is between writers Theo Squires and Mark Jones, who concur that Liverpool probably ought to sign Guehi in January if a deal is feasible.
‘Liverpool sent Antoine Semenyo message as £40m transfer agreement reached – ‘Would love him”
The ‘transfer agreement reached’ is between Alan Shearer and Jason McAteer, who both feel Milos Kerkez has been a bit rubbish so far.
It is lovely to see people get along amicably, but what a shame that their doing so immediately becomes an entirely accidental story implying that Liverpool are about to sign someone.
READ MORE: Liverpool ‘in the market’ as emphatic green light emerges over £90m double January deal
Marc Antoine
And if you listen to Arne Slot – but most importantly the Daily Mirror website‘s interpretation of the Dutchman’s words – Liverpool really might be about to sign someone.
‘ARNE’S PLAN! Slot drops Semenyo and Guehi hints as Liverpool boss lays out champions’ January transfer plan,’ promises much but delivers this:
“This is one of the questions I didn’t expect, talking about signings and the winter break! And the position we are in, it is the last thing that is on my mind. Maybe not on Richard (Hughes)’s, but it is the last thing on my mind. It is not a topic for me at the moment.”
He really does ‘lay out champions’ January transfer plan there’, doesn’t he?
Slot also went into great detail about the options Liverpool have at centre-half, which really does rock the very foundations of the ‘transfer agreement reached’ between Theo Squires and Mark Jones over Guehi.
Then the Liverpool manager dropped a vague line saying, “maybe you are not aware of it yet but we have other positions, at the moment, which is a bit more of an issue,” which apparently translates to #WelcomeSemenyo in Scouse.
If those are ‘hints’ about Liverpool’s January transfer plans then Slot must do a brilliant but entirely unsolvable Murder Mystery party.
Ru the day
Something tells Mediawatch that Ruben Amorim might be similarly cryptic in this Manchester Evening News story, because it seems wholly unlikely that he actually ‘reveals the players Manchester United could sell to ease PSR concerns,’ as the headline suggests.
What he obviously and inevitably actually does is say that selling academy players is heavily incentivised in the modern game. Which is a) something everyone already knows, and b) something everyone already knows Manchester United are especially happy to do.
They made £40m selling Alejandro Garnacho in the summer, should get a similar amount for Marcus Rashford next year, made loads on Alvaro Carreras, Willy Kambwala, Mason Greenwood, Hannibal Mejbri and Scott McTominay in 2024 and will not rest until they are rid of Kobbie Mainoo.
Amorim at no point ‘reveals the players Manchester United could sell to ease PSR concerns’, for he would be a madman to do so. He simply said “the players that are maybe not good enough to play for Manchester United” can “give us some money when you sell them to try to compensate for the financial fair play to buy different players”.
And, well, yeah.
Nothing ventured, nothing strained
The world will never get over when Sadio Mane got really quite annoyed with Mo Salah that one time.
It feels absolutely, irrevocably right for Rio Ferdinand to be the man asking Mane about that incident six years later, and for outlets such as the MailOnline to weirdly keep pretending there is some sort of bad blood there.
‘Sadio Mane has spoken candidly about his strained relationship with Mohamed Salah during their time together at Liverpool, including their infamous bust-up against Burnley in 2019,’ reads the opening paragraph.
The opening paragraph, by the way, to an article in which Mane is quoted as saying Salah is “a very nice guy” with whom he shared a “professional” relationship “until the end”.
He does say that “off the pitch, we weren’t very close,” but he adds that “we always respected each other.”
And also that since the Burnley game in question “we became even closer. And sometimes it happens. For me, it wasn’t personal. He just wants to score, score, score.”
Only one thing is strained here and it isn’t Mane and Salah’s friendship.
Ask a simple question…
‘World Cup 2026 supercomputer predicts every match – can England win it?’ – The Sun website.
Can one of the tournament favourites win the tournament? Feels like it.
