Man United were \u2018ready to go head to head\u2019 over Elliot Anderson, but might have been left confused by his fluctuating valuation.<\/p>\n
We also have some Champions League final \u2018coverage\u2019.<\/p>\n
And a frankly unbelievable update on an Oliver Glasner U-turn.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Broken news<\/p>\n
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\u2026<\/p>\n
\u2018Meet the Arsenal and PSG Wags gracing Champions League final from bikini brand owner to dancer and Brazilian influencer\u2019<\/p>\n
Well it\u00a0is\u00a0Champions League final coverage. It is also absolute sh*te.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sak it off<\/p>\n
The same outlet also brings us this:<\/p>\n
\u2018How Arsenal star Bukayo Saka\u2019s glam Wag Tolami Benson could bank \u00a3500,000 from England\u2019s World Cup campaign\u2019<\/p>\n
Bukayo Saka and Tolami Benson are engaged. She is literally neither his wife nor his girlfriend. And obviously not simultaneously both.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
What the Ell?<\/p>\n
Mediawatch is increasingly fascinated with the reporting of Jeremy Cross on Elliot Anderson\u2019s future for the Daily Mirror.<\/p>\n
On February 27, he wrote that Manchester United and Manchester City were \u2018ready to go head to head\u2019 in \u2018a bidding war for the \u00a375m-rated ace\u2019.<\/p>\n
By April 7, it was revealed that Manchester City felt they had won said race, with Cross suggesting they were \u2018confident of landing Anderson in a \u00a365m deal\u2019.<\/p>\n
The seven games Anderson played in between for club and country \u2013 including a goalscoring performance against Manchester City themselves \u2013 must have been brutal for his valuation to fall \u00a310m.<\/p>\n
And now, in late May with the Premier League season over and the World Cup approaching, suddenly \u2018Manchester United have conceded defeat to bitter rivals City in the race to sign Elliot Anderson\u2019.<\/p>\n
It turns out they weren\u2019t \u2018ready to go head to head\u2019 in \u2018a bidding war\u2019 at all<\/a>, because\u2026<\/p>\n \u2018United bosses are not willing to meet the asking price of around \u00a3100m.\u2019<\/p>\n From \u00a375m to \u00a3100m in three months, with a brief detour to \u00a365m. No wonder Manchester United aren\u2019t bothering negotiating with Evangelos Marinakis if he\u2019s going to be so volatile.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Crossed wires<\/p>\n This, by the way, is presumably a quite unfortunate typo from Cross:<\/p>\n \u2018United will not [sic? Genuinely not sure] turn their attentions elsewhere in their bid to sign midfield reinforcements ahead of next season.<\/p>\n \u2018Adam Wharton, Carlos Belaba [sic] and Real Madrid duo Aurelien Tchouameni and Federico Valverde remain possible targets. While United have considered a shock move for Alexis Mac Allister, but know striking a deal with Liverpool is highly unlikely.\u2019<\/p>\n Unless the exclusive is actually that Manchester United won\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Break Glas in case of emergency<\/p>\n This is quite the headline to see pop up on the Daily Mirror website:<\/p>\n EXCLUSIVE: Crystal Palace chairman Steve Parish clarifies chances of Oliver Glasner U-turn<\/p>\n Now then. Glasner confirmed months ago that he would be leaving<\/a>. Palace have corroborated as such on various occasions, and are deep into the process of identifying and interviewing candidates to take over.<\/p>\n So when we get an EXCLUSIVE from the chairman \u2018clarifying chances of Oliver Glasner U-turn\u2019, 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\u2019s happening since January.<\/p>\n The alternative is that Parish said, in response to what was obviously an absurdly leading question given a justifiably short shrift: \u201cOliver\u2019s not going to stay, no, he\u2019s not going to stay on.\u201d<\/p>\n EXCLUSIVE: Thing that was established to be happening five months ago is still obviously happening.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Managing expectations<\/p>\n The apparent departure of Glasner from the English top flight is lamented by Etienne Fermie of The Sun, who asks: \u2018What has happened to the Premier League\u2019s box office bosses?\u2019.<\/p>\n Has\u00a0any\u00a0manager in history other than Jose Mourinho\u00a0ever\u00a0been described as \u2018box office\u2019? Do we really miss him being a bit of a d*ck and playing relatively poor football but saying some eminently quotable afterwards?<\/p>\n Anyway, back to Fermie, who writes the ludicrous sentence: \u2018Ever since its inception in 1992, each season the Premier League has boasted at least one box office boss.\u2019<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u2018An audience with any of the above promised to be enthralling, enlightening and always newsworthy,\u2019 they add.<\/p>\n Ancelotti just doesn\u2019t fit in that group, does he? Elite coach, but not sure you can say that he \u2018promised to be enthralling, enlightening and always newsworthy\u2019 in his press conferences.<\/p>\n You can chuck Keegan and Benitez in there too \u2013 two managers who are both known pretty much<\/a> for one moment in the media<\/a> rather than providing a catalogue of brilliant interviews.<\/p>\n But no, \u2018gone 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\u2019. Is that the first time anyone other than Richard Keys has used the phrase \u2018big beast\u2019 to describe a manager?<\/p>\n \u2018In order to liven up Premier League press conferences next season you may as well attend armed with a bingo card. Process, culture, structure, vision, moments, respect the ball\u2026 Bingo, everyone is asleep.\u2019<\/p>\n The managers in next season\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n A slight correction<\/p>\n \u2018Arsenal may be Premier League champions but that doesn\u2019t mean they didn\u2019t bottle it\u2019 \u2013 Daily Star.<\/p>\n \u2018Yes it does\u2019 \u2013 Mediawatch.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Quote of the day<\/p>\n \u201cIf there is a singular person you can trace this all back to, I\u2019m going to give 100 per cent credit to Mikel, his staff and the players. Those are the ones\u201d \u2013 a clearly quite giddy Arsenal co-chairman Josh Kroenke.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Man United were \u2018ready to go head to head\u2019 over Elliot Anderson, but might have been left confused…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":459306,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[58699,3709,218,448,348,399,349,3710,50,115,35432,101,56,1955,54,55],"class_list":["post-610282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-elliot-anderson","tag-f365-features","tag-football","tag-front-page","tag-home-page","tag-manchester-city","tag-manchester-united","tag-mediawatch","tag-news","tag-nottingham-forest","tag-popular","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-uncategorized","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=610282"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610282\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/459306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=610282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=610282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=610282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}