Todays Tales

Apparently, in the modern game, if you are to have any kind of talk with your club they have to be “showdown” talks. Can you imagine “showdown” talks in Shankly’s day? Hell no. His idea of a “showdown” was telling a player to sign a contract and be grateful. But Sergio Aguero is not grateful. Not grateful at all. He isn’t massively keen on being, at best, second choice at City no matter how divine and god like Jesus is. Therefore, he is in for “showdown” talks with City in June. June? Surely the whole “showdown” thing suggests an element of urgency?

Slaven Bilic claims China has fallen in love with Andy Carroll and he turned down several bids from China for the big man in January. Fallen in love? What is he, Susan Boyle? I never knew the Chinese were so partial to a pony-tailed, injury prone Geordie. With that news and the contracts on offer, I hear Gazza is growing his hair. Actually, he’s done China already and it didn’t work out.

According to Mesut Ozil, Jose called him a “coward” when they worked together at Real Madrid. Who would have thought that Mesut Ozil wasn’t Jose’s type of player, eh?

There is a rumour going round that Arsene Wenger might be off to manage Barcelona. I have a sneaky suspicion that rumour was started by Oxlade-Chamberlain, or at the very least he liked the tweet that announced it.

Harry Redknapp spent his 70th birthday telling the world that Liverpool were not better off with Klopp. This maybe true, it may not be true but Harry, this is true. West Ham, Southampton, QPR, Spurs and probably even Portsmouth are better off without you.

Simon Mignolet has said that “Liverpool only have themselves to blame” for their current form, to which the back four turned round and gave him a look that said, “really, are you sure it’s not just you?”

Finally, the Telegraph (yes, that paper who seem to really hate football) have been forced to apologise for running a fake story on Dominic Solanke, wrongly suggesting that he was unhappy at Chelsea and wanting out. It’s not been a good season for the Telegraph. In fact, it’s been a Leicester type season for the Telegraph. I reckon Ranieri is looking at the paper’s editor and thinking, “hang on, I lost my job for less.” Though, I’d imagine the editor hasn’t lost the changing room like Claudio allegedly did.