Enzo Fernandez already causing trouble at Man City as ‘first request denied’ after £125m deadline day move | OneFootball

The closing of the transfer window means it’s low tide in content bay and a Mediawatch left scrabbling around for scraps as we, like everyone else, desperately try to wring the last few clicks out of transfers before a long, barren four months of having to make do with a meagre diet of actual football.

It doesn’t bear thinking about.

See if you can spot the moment we realised we were in trouble this morning. That’s right, it’s when we spent actual time looking at all the different squad numbers Enzo Fernandez has ever worn. A genuine cry for help, that.

Obi one Deadline day may be over, but there are still clicks in them thar transfer hills. The Daily Express leap upon the vague sense of disquiet over Man United’s almost sarcastically quiet approach to deadline day with this headline.

The deal to be completed ‘after deadline’? Chido Obi joining Willem II on loan. And, if it does happen, it will be very much before the relevant deadline, which in the Netherlands is tonight.

The ‘Ait-Nouri twist’ designed to lure the desperate and unwary in? That he didn’t become the 15th player to play for both Manchester clubs. Which was really more of an untwisting if indeed it were anything.

Eight bawl We’re aware this might sound a bit like a brag, so to be clear: it’s not. When we saw this headline in the Daily Star…

…we immediately knew deep in our bones it was going to be some b*llshit about shirt numbers. Again, to be absolutely clear: we are not remotely proud – and are even, perhaps, a touch concerned – of how deeply infected we’ve become by this nonsense. How swiftly we can spot it.

Because it is, of course, some b*llshit about shirt numbers. And a typo that is making us laugh more than it should because it is surprisingly fun to say out loud.

So yes, Fernandez won’t be wearing the number eight for Man City this season. Big whoop. But also… there is simply no suggestion that he has made and thus subsequently been denied any request here.

Nowhere in the extensive quotes from the player himself that the Star’s story has faithfully copied and pasted from City’s website does he even jokingly refer to requesting a shirt number that isn’t available.

Which might be because there’s not really that much compelling evidence that it is his ‘favoured… shirt that he wears for club and country’. He was number five when he first signed for Chelsea before switching to eight, but never wore number eight for River Plate or Benfica, where his preference appears to have been for 13.

And as for international level, Fernandez so favours the number eight shirt that he actively gave it up in favour of wearing 24 at the World Cup, that you might remember happened fairly recently.

Mediawatch doesn’t claim to be entirely on top of the intricacies of the hierarchical structures within the Argentina national squad, but we rather suspect that if Fernandez were notably keen to have the number eight shirt, he would have been given it over Jude Bellingham-botherer Valentin Barco. Just a hunch.

But yes, it’s for sure a worrying start to his Man City career all right.

Bit of Blue Mediawatch finds itself in broad agreement with the general tone of The Sun’s assessment of Sky Sports News bringing out some bloke with a guitar to sing a song about deadline day that absolutely nobody wanted or asked for.

It was very hard to conclude anything at that moment other than verily the game has indeed gone.

But we’re not sure about this bit.

We’re not sure if they’re talking about yesterday’s bloke with the guitar or the transfer musings of the fella from Blue, but comparing either (or both) of those excruciating yet undeniably deliberate additions to the broadcast with the guy who waved what The Sun later go on to spectacularly second-mention as ‘rubber genitalia’ seems unnecessarily harsh.

Left out Just a genuinely baffling intro from Samuel Luckhurst in The Sun as he gives the inside track on Manchester United’s transfer window.

We suppose they might wonder that. Be a bit weird, though.

Exceedingly good takes From the Mirror’s summer transfer round-up: