Today’s fluff is feeling rather sorry for itself
If smoke signals drifting over from Germany are to be believed, Jürgen Klopp is just a jaunty baseball-cap fitting away from being the next Liverpool manager on a three-year deal. A tracksuit and hat combo is a much happier look than Brendan Rodgers’ in the past few weeks, who dressed like he was attending his own funeral until, it turned out, he was. Poor Brendan.
And unless you’ve been asleep under a rock for the past 24 hours, you’ll also know that Carlo Ancelotti is in the frame for the job at Anfield too. He jetted in to London on Sunday night but apparently that has nothing to do with a weird desire to embrace the challenge of transforming Danny Ings into the next Filippo Inzaghi and everything to do with him being a metropolitan city-hopper with a taste for top, top things.
Who else? Well, there’s the European-Cup winning Chelsea manager. No, sorry not you José. The Mill’s talking about Roberto Di Matteo, who resigned from Schalke at the end of last season and would be a more leftfield choice than Song of Life on repeat. There’s also Frank De Boer too, the Ajax head coach, who was seemingly on the verge of becoming every team’s next manager three years ago when the Dutch club’s brand of football was trendier than paint-splattered cereal cafes. He’s all about high-tempo, zippy passing, fluid tactics … and desperation. In the past year he’s made more come-and-get-me pleas than a marooned sailor with a strong mobile phone signal and unlimited battery life. Anyway, word is he’ll jump into Steve McClaren’s warm spot at Newcastle when Mike Ashley pulls the trigger.
There’s also the former Napoli and Inter manager Walter Mazzarri who has had enough of playing solitaire for the past year and would happily take possession of a five-bedroom pad in leafy Formby. It says here he’s visited Liverpool recently and it wasn’t to marvel at the glow-in-the-dark skate park that’s confusing kids in Everton Valley as part of the city’s biennale.
Whoever gets the job will have the immediate headache of stoppingPhilippe Coutinho from being bundled off to Barcelona. The Catalans haven’t signed a flighty trickster in at least six months, so they’ll rectify this by nipping in for the Brazilian and leaving £30m in FSG’s safe when their transfer embargo is lifted in January.
And seeing as this is a managerial special, let’s have a look at Sunderland, where Dick Advocaat has done what he should have done at the end of last season and walked away from the dog’s dinner that has been cooked up by a collection of chancers in the past few years.Sean Dyche is being talked up as a replacement due to his experience of keeping Burnley in the top fli …oh. Sean Dyche is being talked up as his replacement. And then there’s Sam Allardyce, who has a point to prove in the north-east. But even he must wonder whether his pragmatic powers would be lost amid the rubble and stench of despair at the Stadium of Light. Nigel Pearson is mad enough to jump into the hotseat too. What could possibly go wrong there?
Elsewhere, in the world of real footballers, Manchester United have been urged by Bayern Munich to stop demeaning themselves by bidding for Thomas Müllerevery spare minute of the day. Are you listening Ed?
Arsenal are after, and you’ll like this, another nippy winger-cum-striker. This time it’s Celta Vigo’s Nolito, a 28-year-old who has had a late-career patch of good form and has been banging them in this season. Well he’s scored five goals, or 20 minutes’ worth of Sergio Agüero.
And Juventus and Newcastle are set for a black-and-white tug of stripes overMathieu Debuchy, who has had enough of being ignored and lonely in north London. Apparently, he favours a return to the north-east of England and not Turin. The crazy so and so.
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