Sunday Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Pep: Ban not game changer
PEP GUARDIOLA has told Manchester City that his future does not hinge on the club’s FFP fate.
Juventus looked at the possibility of snatching Guardiola away from the Premier League champions in the belief that the Catalan would walk away if City were hit by a Champions League ban for financial irregularities.
But the Turin giants are now ready to appoint Chelsea boss Maurizio Sarri after agreeing a compensation package with the London club when they were told Guardiola is going nowhere.
City bosses have assured their manager that they have met all of UEFA’s requirements.
And Guardiola’s response was to tell them that he had every intention of honouring the final two years of his contract anyway.
Guardiola has just landed a unique Treble of Premier League, FA Cup and Carabao Cup in his third season.
But despite defending the title and League Cup, City were eliminated from the Champions League at the quarter-final stage for the second successive year.
Guardiola is desperate to deliver the club owner’s dream of winning the Champions League.
And the threatened ban from European competition for the 2020-21 season would devastate that ambition.
City have appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport that UEFA’s decision to send the case to their disciplinary body after a two-month investigation is spurious.
The club believe they have offered indisputable evidence to UEFA that allegations made in a German magazine that they had artificially inflated sponsorship deals to beat financial restrictions are false. 1
2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 long loan with an option to extend the deal by a further 12 months.
That would enable Madrid to slash up to £50million off their wage bill over the next two seasons.
And United are also willing to pay a loan fee to further tempt the fallen Spanish giants.
Zidane is trying to force the former Spurs star out of the club as he looks to rebuild the team.
But Bale is refusing to Man City Liverpool MAN UTD Arsenal Chelsea C Palace Tottenham Wolves Everton Leicester 21 21 21 21 21 21 21 21 21 21 18 16 12 11 10 10 10 9 9 9 0 4 4 3 5 4 2 5 3 3 3 1 5 7 6 7 9 7 9 9 budge – and it remains to be seen whether he would be open to a move to Old Trafford given that United failed to qualify for the Champions League. United are willing to service the huge £480,000-aweek contract that Bale (left) signed in 2016. He still has three years left on that deal, but the package would give him parity with United’s highest earner
Alexis
Sanchez. 47 52 36 36 28 37 36 28 30 30 13 34 54 15 37 52 25 11 40 28 8 36 25 3 35 30 7 34 23 13 32 27 1 32 24 6 30 27 3 30 1 Man City 2 Chelsea 3 Liverpool 4 Arsenal 5 MAN UTD 6 Fulham 7 Leicester 8 Wolves 9 West Ham 10 Everton 14636 13348 13345 11269 10767 9983 9695 9552 9394 9203 12998 11611 11273 9372 8886 8118 7727 7483 7429 7011 88.8 87.0 84.5 83.2 82.5 81.3 79.7 79.1 78.3 77.8 1 Man City 2 MAN UTD 3 Liverpool 4 Leicester 5 Chelsea 6 Tottenham 7 Bournem’th 8 Everton 9 Arsenal 10 West Ham 370 310 306 309 325 322 252 274 244 249 138 123 121 110 105 103 95 94 88 83 1 Liverpool 17.0 2 Arsenal 14.8 3 Burnley 13.8 4 C Palace 13.1 5 Man City 12.7 6 Watford 12.6 7 Southampton 12.5 9 Bournem’th 12.3 9 MAN UTD 11.6 10 Wolves 11.3