It’s not easy, being big and rich. Just ask David Cameron, or the Queen, poor unfortunate souls of whom unreasonable demands are made, simply on account of their dimensions and exchequers. So it’s easy to understand the plight of Edward Gareth ‘Ed’ Woodward, under all sorts of pressure to perform the complicated task of spending money, on footballers, as if those two disparate things simply attract each other like a woman who makes the bed and a man who steals the covers.
So, despite trying so hard this summer, Woodward has achieved fewer incoming transfers than 90 of the Football League’s 92 clubs. And now, just as he is about to successfully overpay Sporting Lisbon for Marcos Rojo, he’s trying to gazunder them at the last minute, insisting that they take Nani as part of the deal.
Meanwhile, Franz Beckenbauer has been discussing Marco Reus, who has a clause in his contract at Borussia Dortmund allowing him to leave next summer for £25m. “The amount of the release clause wasn’t a big secret,” he said. “Every interested party probably knew it.” Or, put another way, that a club in the world’s most honest, authentic and altruistic league should have an exceptional player, and that club not be Bayern Munich, is an imbalance that needs addressing immediately.
Though Beckenbauer would like to sign Reus, the likelihood is that his pace and directness would deeply distress Pep Guardiola, and, not being unpleasant, the player also has no desire to join them. Beckenbauer has therefore suggested that the player will end up at Manchester United, which, of course, he will not.
Brendan Rodgers is still pretending to have the remotest chance of attracting Radamel Falcao from Monaco. Real Madrid need to sell an EU player before he can join their squad, so while they are broken by the devilishness of Woodward’s hardball over Ángel Di María, Liverpool are dancing, bouncing and pointing at themselves like a toddler mainlining Sunny D. For his part, Falcao loves both solitary perambulation and dreamless sleep.
Elsewhere and in typical style, Spurs are still trying to sign Morgan Schneiderlin from Southampton despite turning up once the asset-stripping was over. This leaves Daniel Levy in something of a predicament, as with just 13 days of the transfer window remaining, he has yet be awarded the attention that his gravitas, acumen, talent and charisma deserve. While the world laments the decadent, fetid place it has become, he will feel better by shoving Benoît Assou-Ekotto out of the door for free.
A couple of hundred miles north, Steve Bruce is seeking a striker. Being the only person outside of Old Trafford and Roy Hodgson who considers Danny Welbeck a footballer has not endeared him to those in whom he is interested, Welbeck included, nor was he allowed to pay Watford a hilarious £12m for Troy Deeney. So, instead, he’s talking to Lorient about Vincent Aboubakar, at the same time as looking like Mrs White from Cluedo; try this at home, and you’ll find it’s not as easy as it sounds.
But what does appear to be easy is for English clubs to extract players from Napoli. Swansea, “conquerors of Manchester United”, are helping themselves to Federico Fernández, while QPR are about to beat Sunderland to the loan of Eduardo Vargas.
This could, though, all change. Vargas is understood to prefer QPR, not because it’s in London, or because the money is better, but because of Glenn Hoddle. The news that Hoddle might be taking Tony Pulis’ job at Crystal Palace is unlikely to be well received. You see, for the past week, Hoddle has been at Loftus Road, working under Harry Redknapp; good day!
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