Football transfer rumours: Wilfried Bony to Liverpool?

http://www.theguardian.com/football/2014/dec/15/football-tranfer-rumours

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Flushed with the success of their £120m summer splurge, Liverpool’s fabled transfer committee could convene in the coming days to pore over assorted dossiers, graphs, spreadsheets, pie-charts, scouting reports, filtering reports, recommendations and personal testimonies before concluding that Wilfried Bony, the Premier League’s leading goalscorer in 2014, is quite good at “doing goals” and a player on whom it might be worth taking a punt.

Sky Sports pundit Jamie Carragher certainly thinks they should sign him for £20 or £25m, but there’s a small snag: Manchester City also want the Ivorian too and will presumably be happy to top any remuneration package offered by the Merseyside club and offer the added bonus of Champions League football in a potential deal that sounds like a no-brainer.

City are also reported to be interested in getting Borussia Dortmund centre-back and Rumour Mill resident Mats Hummels on board, having apparently had their £17m bid for the German’s Uruguay and Atlético Madrid counterpart José Giménez rejected by the Spanish side.

A mere stripling of 19 years of age, Giménez already has 19 international caps to his name and England fans may remember him from that defeat in the Arena de São Paulo, which resulted in the early elimination of Roy Hodgson’s side from the World Cup. Louis van Gaal is also interested in Giménez and may try to prise him away from the Vicente Calderón Stadium with an increased offer.

Despite the fact that nobody seems to be taking them too seriously, rumours persist that Manchester United wish to sign Gareth Bale from Real Madrid for £90m, in a deal which would finance big money moves from the European champions for Chelsea midfielder Eden Hazard and Liverpool winger Raheem Sterling.

Do you remember when vast swathes of a certain country’s media and football governing body were loudly clamouring for Manchester United winger Adnan Januzaj to be allowed to declare for England, even though the young player was ineligible and hadn’t publicly expressed the slightest in doing so? Hmmm ...

OK, an easier question: do you remember Adnan Januzaj? Well, the suits at Real Sociedad and Inter seem to recall him making quite a good first impression when he began gadding down the wing for Manchester United. And having noticed the 19-year-old has failed to impress a manager fabled for his ability to bring the best out of bright young talent, both clubs are set to duke it out in an effort to secure the youngster’s services on loan in January.

Inter are also interested in signing 20-year-old Argentinian midfielder Joaquin Correa, who plays for Estudiantes, has an £8m buy-out clause in his contract and was in Italy last week trying to obtain an EU work permit . If they are to secure his scrawl, they’ll need to fight off competition from moneybags outfits Monaco and Manchester City. New York Red Bulls want to bring Steven Gerrard to the MLS and at this point who could blame him for deciding life at Anfield is getting a bit too stressful and embarking on a new adventure in the Big Apple instead?

Despite missing a sitter of such epic proportions last Saturday that he was almost reduced to tears, Sunderland striker Jozy Altidore is still wanted by Werder Bremen. The German club could pay £7m to end the USA striker’s Wearside misery in January.

And despite speculation to the contrary, Manchester City have no plans to take Spanish striker David Villa from their own MLS satellite club New York City on some weird Frank Lampard-esque loan. They have also agreed a £3m deal to let their striker John Guidetti make his loan move to Celtic permanent.