Foxes still in hunt for Slimani
JOE HART may have found his escape route but many of the other big-money Premier League outcasts must be fearing they will remain in football limbo until January.
With the transfer deadline looming, it is not so much a case of who the top clubs will buy, but who they can offload.
After record spending that is likely to top the £1bn mark for the first time and a summer in which 11 Premier League clubs have smashed their transfer record, managers are now desperate to try to balance the books and trim the wage bills.
But the downside of the enormous money generated by the broadcast deals is that clubs are finding it increasingly difficult to shift high-earning players when they fall out of favour or a new boss decides they do not fit in with his plans.
You cannot blame any player for sitting tight. Fans are quick to criticise when they agitate for a move away but a contract is a two-way deal, so if the clubs want to sell they have to meet their financial obligations.
Out of a sense of loyalty to their longest-serving player and crowd favourite, City are understood to have agreed to pick up the bulk of Hart’s £90,000-a-week wages to ensure his season-long loan deal to Torino goes through.
But it underlines Hart’s limited options and desperation for regular football that he has agreed to join a mid-table Serie A outfit who last won the Italian title in the midSeventies. It looks like City will
have to do the same if they want to shift Wilfried Bony and Samir Nasri before tomorrow’s 11pm deadline.
Nasri is on about £160,000 a week, while Bony earns roughly £100,000 – a lot of money for players who may not even get in Pep Guardiola’s match-day squad.
City clearly would not be averse to offloading Yaya Toure as well but the Ivory Coast midfielder, 33, is a slightly different case in that he is understood to be quite happy to sit on his £220,00-a-week wages, play the odd game and then leave as a free agent when his contract expires next summer. City have simply accepted the situation.
Bastian Schweinsteiger, 32, indicated a similar stubborn stance to Toure when he announced last week that Manchester United will be his “last club in Europe”.
The German World Cup winner has two years left on a contract worth around £20m, so United will either have to pay him off or accept that he will continue to turn up at Carrington and train with the youngsters without ever kicking a ball in anger for Jose Mourinho. There has been an outcry in Germany over Mourinho’s treatment of Schweinsteiger but, as the United boss has pointed out, he does not see Bayern or any other Bundesliga club rushing to offer him a route home.
The real outcry should be at Old Trafford, where the board sanctioned former boss Louis van Gaal’s decision to sign Schweinsteiger, when he was clearly past his best and troubled by a knee injury, for an eye-watering £36m in transfer fee and wages.
For all the sophisticated recruiting methods these days, some deals never cease to bewilder.
The problem is not just confined to the Premier League. France international Moussa Sissoko, who outshone the world’s most expensive player Paul Pogba in the Euro 2016 final, does not want to ply his trade in the Championship by staying at Newcastle. The trouble is, no club seems willing to pay the £30 m asking price for him.
On Merseyside, Roberto Martinez’s expensive legacy to Everton was Senegalese misfit Oumar Niasse, who cost them £13.5 m and signed a lucrative four-and-a-half-year contract in February but is not in new boss Ronald Koeman’s plans.
So there will be a lot of players anxiously checking their mobile phones in the next 36 hours.
If nothing materialises, their careers will go on the back burner for the next four months. But at least their bank manager will remain happy. LEICESTER are targeting a £45million double raid on Sporting Lisbon for striker Islam Slimani and midfielder Adrien Silva.
Manager Claudio Ranieri is keen to add both before tomorrow’s transfer deadline despite being frustrated so far in his attempts to land Algerian international Slimani.
The Foxes are thought to have tabled a bid of around £23m for Slimani, with the Portuguese club demanding more than £30m. But Leicester remain optimistic that a compromise can be reached.
The 27-year-old Silva claims the Premier League champions want him to replace N’Golo Kante and admits he is keen to make the move.
Silva, who is valued at around £21m, said: “Yes, I confirm this proposal. Leicester is interesting and corresponds to my career goals.
“After the past 15 years at Sporting, this opportunity is something exceptional for me and can allow me to express and impose myself in another championship, and also to evolve in the Premier League, which is a stunning league.”
Slimani’s arrival could mean a move away from Leicester for Leonardo Ulloa, who would drop down the pecking order.
Leicester are also planning contract talks with defender Danny Simpson as Ranieri looks to tie down another title-winner.
Key trio Jamie Vardy, Danny Drinkwater and Riyad Mahrez have all signed new contracts and Simpson is keen to follow suit.
Simpson, who has a year left on his current deal, said: “Everyone knows I love Leicester and I want to stay here.
“I have never been in a team like this. It is a good group – top boys. We are going places.
“We have the Champions League and I feel I am playing the best football of my career. I am settled and that is down to everyone at Leicester.”