It would seem Manchester City have leaked their transfer targets to replace Carlos Tevez to the London Independent. The four strikers named are Mario Gomez , Alvaro Negredo, Roma's Pablo Osvaldo and Benfica's Oscar Cardozo. While Manuel Pellegrini will probably look to play Sergio Aguero as a lone striker in his first XI, the Argentinean was beset with injury problems last season. So given that Edin Dzeko has also been heavily linked with leaving the club, whichever forward City sign will have an important role to play next season. All four of their reported targets appear have some similarities, a cost of £20 million or under, prolific goalscoring records over a number of years and none of them are really 'top,top' players.
The newspaper describe Mario Gomez as the most 'exciting prospect' of the four but it was noticeable how Bayern Maunich improved as a team last season after the German was dropped for Mario Mandzukic, whose hold-up play and work-rate was a significant upgrade. This is despite Gomez's brilliant record over the previous two campaigns, where he scored 80 goals in 97 games.
Manchester United have put the wheels in motion for another 'transfer saga' after having a £12 million bid for Leighton Baines rejected. According to various reports, Everton want between £16 and £20 million with the club prepared to offer a new £70,000 a week contract in an effort to persuade the England international to stay. As the Daily Mail points out, this would seem to put Patrice Evra's future at United in doubt even after somewhat of a bounceback year in 2012/13. Monaco have been rumoured to be interested but Evra also has eh, links to Paris.
The Sun are the source of slightly odd transfer gossip this morning with the news that 'JOSE MOURINHO last night made a £5million bid to nab Norwich keeper John Ruddy.But the Chelsea chief must double that to stand a chance of capturing him.' Leaving aside for a moment the unnecessary use of block capitals and calling a football manager a 'chief', it would also be strange if Chelsea spent £10 million pounds on probably a third choice 'keeper with Thibaut Courtois on loan at Atletico Madrid, even if it improved their quota of 'home-grown' players.
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