Football transfer rumours: Harry Kane to Manchester United?
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Version 0 of 1. The sight of today’s Daily Mail back page could send Tottenham Hotspur supporters spiralling through the five stages of grief identified by the Swiss scientist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her 1969 tome On Death and Dying. Possibly in a bid to boost sales and ease back on the morbidity of it all, Kübler-Ross later gussied up her study to encompass any form of personal loss, such as the death of a loved one, the loss of a job, a relationship, a pet or indeed a promising 21-year-old striker who has scored 30 goals in his first full season in the Premier League. Denial: “No, of course Harry Kane isn’t going to Manchester United. Ha-ha, the very notion! Ha!” Anger: “Why us? Why would God let this happen?! WHY?!?!?!” Bargaining: “Emmanuel Adebayor’s available; they could take him instead?” Depression: “This sucks, another mid-table finish for us.” Acceptance: “Ah, it’ll be fine. He’s probably just a one-season wonder anyway.” According to the Mail, Kane is top of Louis van Gaal’s summer shopping list and could become the latest high-profile Tottenham star to plod the well-trodden path between White Hart Lane and Old Trafford, following in the footsteps of Teddy Sheringham, Michael Carrick and Dimitar Berbatov. A whopping £45m is the fee being mentioned in conjunction with a classic “swoop” for a player who inked a new five-and-a-half-year deal in February. In old news we’ve all heard before, United will ramp up their efforts to lure Gareth Bale from a Real Madrid purgatory he has stoically shown no obvious desire to abandon, while they are also interested Wolfsburg’s Kevin De Bruyne. Van Gaal is also understood to be interested in picking up Danny Ings from Burnley for £5m, at which point Brendan Rodgers may sniffily point out that Liverpool didn’t want him anyway. To accommodate all these high-profile arrivals at Old Trafford, Robin van Persie and Ángel Di María will be frogmarched out the door marked “Do One”. Marseille’s Ghanaian striker André Ayew has been a fixture in the King’s Cross crawlspace the Rumour Mill calls home for some months now, having announced his intention to leave the Ligue 1 side for pastures new and preferably Premier League this summer. The 25-year-old is this morning linked with Arsenal, Liverpool and – of course – Manchester United, who seem determined to stockpile prolific goal-getters in the manner of a club that has got wind of some kind of imminent striker apocalypse-o-gedden. Arsenal also have their beady eye on Petr Cech but will attempt to prise Kasper Schmeichel from Leicester City should their efforts to sign the Chelsea goalkeeper be thwarted by a certain Portuguese wind-up merchant who may well scupper a prospective £10m deal for no other reason than devilment masquerading as a reluctance to sell such a good player to a rival. Having all but secured their Premier League survival after an at times hairy season in the top flight, Leicester are reported to be interested in bidding £8m for the Mainz striker Shinji Okazaki, a Japan international who can also cut a dash in midfield and has previously attracted interest from Liverpool, Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur. Chelsea’s attempts to sign Atlético Madrid pair Antoine Griezmann and Koke may well hit a snag now that our own Dominic Fifield has uncovered the Spanish side’s fiendish plan to raise the buyout clauses of both players to nearer £100m in the new contracts they’ll be offered this summer. And in management news, attempting to figure out what will happen at Leeds next is something of a fool’s errand but here goes: the contract of the manager, Neil Redfearn, expires in June but, despite the heroics he has performed in keeping this most dysfunctional of Championship clubs on an even keel, he has not yet been offered a new one. Today’s Mirror reveals that Gus Poyet may well be bringing his brand of slow, ponderous and ineffective football to Elland Road, which ought to be a real treat for long-suffering regulars. |