Brumours

Hang on a second “football”. Since when did you start announcing all the transfers at the weekend? Summer weekends are meant for cricket, not keeping an eye on Twitter and seeing which shockingly bad “player reveal” happens next.

And we are not talking small transfers either.

Manchester United hoodwinked everyone, especially Chelsea, into thinking they wanted Nemanja Matic before shelling out £75m for Romelu Lukaku which is one hell of a lot of money for someone who, to quote the late great George Best, controls a ball further than I can kick it. But, Jose Mourinho does like a big strong lad up front and Lukaku is certainly that. £90m on a midfielder last season, £75m on a striker this – someone needs to win the league soon I think. The £75m could apparently increase too, as there are an extra £15m worth of add-ons available providing Lukaku hits certain targets – presumably one of them is developing a first touch.

Romelu Lukaku coming in meant there was even less for Wayne Rooney, so he has headed back to his former backyard to the kind of fanfare normally reserved for the returning prodigal son. Critics of Rooney are saying that even a free transfer represents poor value for Everton, whereas critics of Lukaku are suggesting that Everton have actually improved their strikeforce and got £75m for the pleasure. So Rooney gets to go home, reminding the world that “Once a Blue, always a Blue” unless a club who might actually win something come knocking on your door.

Chelsea, smarting from not being invited to the original party, quickly rushed through the announcement that they have signed AS Roma’s Antonio Rudiger who wanted to leave Serie A due to the inherent racism he faced. He will be delighted to have learned that John Terry has left for Aston Villa then.

Diego Costa has been allowed to keep his flip-flops on for a while longer as the talk of a return to Atletico Madrid gets louder and louder. The fee being touted is still only £22m, which feels incredibly cheap considering he is so much better than Romelu Lukaku, as a random example.

Craig Shakespeare has warned his Leicester City want-away star Riyad Mahrez that unless his attitude improves he will be dropped. This kind of approach works so well, as Mahrez is now very likely to opt against sitting there picking up huge amounts of money for doing next to nothing and jolly well buck up his ideas. Shakespeare is already lining up a replacement for the Algerian in the shape of Swansea City’s Gylfi Sigurdsson who, hopefully, will have learned from the last time he left the Liberty Stadium and chain himself to the goalposts. Everton are also thought to be interested because they just are alright?

Brumours would not be brumours without including some kind of social media tenuous link. Target of many, AS Monaco midfielder Tiemoue Bakayoko LIKED a tweet linking him to Liverpool. That’s B-A-K-A-Y-O-K-O-1-7 for the back of your new red shirt then. All the Liverpool fans need now is RB Leipzig’s Naby Keita following Jordan Henderson on Instagram and Liverpool will have one hell of a midfield.