According to Tuttosport – via goal.com – Manchester City are currently loitering quite close to the Ajax striker, Luis Suárez, casting a series of coquettish sideways glances, fiddling with their hair and attempting to appear simulatenously nonchalant and mysterious, as well as pantingly available. Juventus are also interested. Suárez will cost around £25m.
In the Daily Mirror, City are also in the process of signing the Israeli teenager, Gai Assulin, previously known as "the new Messi". Assulin cancelled his own contract at Barcelona and is currently a free agent, allowing him to faff about having trials with people and having his agent place stories about him being the New Messi rather than actually getting on and playing real actual proper football. The new old unemployed Messi is currently only eligible to play in the reserves.
Also in the Mirror: "The campaign against Liverpool's owners is about to reach for the stars … with a cast of Hollywood A-listers READY to highlight the protest." Really? Angelina Jolie, George Clooney and Tom Cruise? Will Smith? Jackie Chan? Jessica Alba in a Hitachi-era shirt waving around a bedsheet daubed with the words "GO HOME YANKEE ASSET STRIPPERS"? Not quite. "Film industry big-hitters Mike Jefferies and Dan Hubbard, who are passionate Reds disgusted at what is happening to their beloved club, are on Merseyside this weekend." Yes: Mike Jefferies and Dan Hubbard. The Mill loves this town.
Preston are asking £5million for midfielder Adam Barton, who is "on the radar" of Bolton and Stoke. The Mill imagines Tony Pulis's radar to be a clunky, beige, wind-up second world war vintage affair which he sits in front of brooding and muttering beneath his baseball cap looking for Stukas and Messerschmitts. Jelle Van Damme could be kung fu kicking his way back to Anderlecht after "failing to settle" in Wolverhampton. "My adjustment is difficult, not sporting but social. I miss the life I had in Belgium," Van Damme has said, drifting into a private reverie of waxed cheeses, mayonnaise, efficient motorway interchanges and an unsurpassed local network of dapper, mustachioed private detectives.
The Sun alleges Avram Grant has been spotted shouting inside a small car while reversing very quickly down the central shopping street in Minsk before leaping out and beating 14 traffic wardens into unconsciousness. Although on closer reading "Avram's Bourne ultimatum" may in fact be something about signing the Bournemouth midfielder Marc Pugh. Everton are giving trials to somebody called "American prodigy Omar Salgado." And Newcastle have somehow signed the France Under-18 player, Yven Moyo, from Sochaux despite the entire principle of the transfer window being that you're not supposed to spend September stockpiling random midfielders.
The Daily Mail says Aston Villa and Everton are both "keeping tabs on" Racing Genk's £5m-rated Belgian international striker Jelle Vossen. This is also where The Mill, if it had any, would keep its tabs. The Mail, by the way, is also still trying to get Germany's Under-21 captain Lewis Holtby to play for England, even though he is clearly German and once he'd started to play for England he could comfortably become the subject of a series of swingeing why oh why is this German coming over here taking our jobs style Mail editorials. "The talented playmaker exploded into the spotlight last week after Sportsmail revealed he was still eligible for an England senior call-up through parentage," the Mail claims. Exploded is probably a bit of an exaggeration.
Back on Goal.com the former Liverpool disappointment Alberto Aquilani says Internazionale wanted to sign him in the summer. "Inter wanted me this summer, they tried to get me. There was something, but nothing more," he says, tiptoeing politely around the fact that, possibly, they may have realised at some stage during their inquiries that he appears to be constructed entirely out of gingerbread and chewing gum.
Popular pre-dinner cocktail the Mamelodi Sundowns are ready to sell their 18-year-old defender Siyanda Xulu to Arsenal. Xulu is currently on trial. "It is satisfying for us that the young man is being acknowledged and pursued by such esteemed teams," the communications manager Alex Shakoane told The Sowetan, putting on a posh-sounding voice and adjusting his horn-rimmed monocle.
And something called Radio RMC has claimed Bayern Munich want to sign the tyro Chelsea jinker Gaël Kakuta, who surprisingly could be stolen "on a Bosman" next year even though The Mill assumed Chelsea had only just stolen him from somewhere else themselves.
