Man United ‘will not’ sign another midfielder this summer after £75m/£65m/£100m Anderson surrender | OneFootball

Man United were ‘ready to go head to head’ over Elliot Anderson, but might have been left confused by his fluctuating valuation.

We also have some Champions League final ‘coverage’.

And a frankly unbelievable update on an Oliver Glasner U-turn.

Broken news

The biggest story in all of football as of Friday morning? Over to The Sun website we go, as ever expecting nothing and still being disappointed…

Well it is Champions League final coverage. It is also absolute sh*te.

Sak it off

The same outlet also brings us this:

Bukayo Saka and Tolami Benson are engaged. She is literally neither his wife nor his girlfriend. And obviously not simultaneously both.

What the Ell?

Mediawatch is increasingly fascinated with the reporting of Jeremy Cross on Elliot Anderson’s future for the Daily Mirror.

On February 27, he wrote that Manchester United and Manchester City were ‘ready to go head to head’ in ‘a bidding war for the £75m-rated ace’.

By April 7, it was revealed that Manchester City felt they had won said race, with Cross suggesting they were ‘confident of landing Anderson in a £65m deal’.

The seven games Anderson played in between for club and country – including a goalscoring performance against Manchester City themselves – must have been brutal for his valuation to fall £10m.

And now, in late May with the Premier League season over and the World Cup approaching, suddenly ‘Manchester United have conceded defeat to bitter rivals City in the race to sign Elliot Anderson’.

It turns out they weren’t ‘ready to go head to head’ in ‘a bidding war’ at all, because…

From £75m to £100m in three months, with a brief detour to £65m. No wonder Manchester United aren’t bothering negotiating with Evangelos Marinakis if he’s going to be so volatile.

Crossed wires

This, by the way, is presumably a quite unfortunate typo from Cross:

Unless the exclusive is actually that Manchester United won’t sign a midfielder at all this summer and are about to put an awful lot of faith in Manuel Ugarte. Way to bury the lede, Jeremy.

Break Glas in case of emergency

This is quite the headline to see pop up on the Daily Mirror website:

Now then. Glasner confirmed months ago that he would be leaving. Palace have corroborated as such on various occasions, and are deep into the process of identifying and interviewing candidates to take over.

So when we get an EXCLUSIVE from the chairman ‘clarifying chances of Oliver Glasner U-turn’, it is only right to expect, well, a U-turn. Or at least the vaguest hint of one. There is nothing to clarify otherwise; everyone has known what’s happening since January.

The alternative is that Parish said, in response to what was obviously an absurdly leading question given a justifiably short shrift: “Oliver’s not going to stay, no, he’s not going to stay on.”

EXCLUSIVE: Thing that was established to be happening five months ago is still obviously happening.

Managing expectations

The apparent departure of Glasner from the English top flight is lamented by Etienne Fermie of The Sun, who asks: ‘What has happened to the Premier League’s box office bosses?’.

Has any manager in history other than Jose Mourinho ever been described as ‘box office’? Do we really miss him being a bit of a d*ck and playing relatively poor football but saying some eminently quotable afterwards?

Anyway, back to Fermie, who writes the ludicrous sentence: ‘Ever since its inception in 1992, each season the Premier League has boasted at least one box office boss.’

Among them he lists Sir Alex Ferguson, Arsene Wenger, Kevin Keegan, Jose Mourinho, Carlo Ancelotti, Rafa Benitez, Antonio Conte, Jurgen Klopp, Thomas Tuchel and Pep Guardiola.

‘An audience with any of the above promised to be enthralling, enlightening and always newsworthy,’ they add.

Ancelotti just doesn’t fit in that group, does he? Elite coach, but not sure you can say that he ‘promised to be enthralling, enlightening and always newsworthy’ in his press conferences.

You can chuck Keegan and Benitez in there too – two managers who are both known pretty much for one moment in the media rather than providing a catalogue of brilliant interviews.

But no, ‘gone are the big beasts who were happy to stand up to the powers that be or take on any subject in front of the camera’. Is that the first time anyone other than Richard Keys has used the phrase ‘big beast’ to describe a manager?

The managers in next season’s Premier League include Mikel Arteta, Unai Emery, Xabi Alonso, Frank Lampard, David Moyes, Arne Slot, Vitor Pereira and Roberto De Zerbi. Whatever you think of their tactical approaches, the all-important soundbites should be taken care of too.

A slight correction

‘Arsenal may be Premier League champions but that doesn’t mean they didn’t bottle it’ – Daily Star.

‘Yes it does’ – Mediawatch.

Quote of the day

“If there is a singular person you can trace this all back to, I’m going to give 100 per cent credit to Mikel, his staff and the players. Those are the ones” – a clearly quite giddy Arsenal co-chairman Josh Kroenke.