England ace Daniel Sturridge has had enough of warming Liverpool’s bench and is impatiently eyeing the nearest emergency exit, and will apparently remain keen on walking through it even if it leads to Stoke or Stratford. Potential suitors will be expected to pay at least £28m for the 27-year-old, reports the Mirror, which notes that West Ham “are desperate for a high-class marksman” and that Stoke “remain huge fans of Sturridge’s ability”.
But he’s not the only Premier League striker the Hammers are being linked with this morning, with the same newspaper saying that Slaven Bilic is “weighing up a shock move” for Watford’s talismanic captain Troy Deeney and that “enquiries have been made into his availability in January”. No fee is mentioned for the 28-year-old, though Leicester found that £25m was not enough to tempt the Hornets in the summer, so either way it looks like being an expensive January for West Ham. It’s just as well they got their stadium so cheap, really. The Foxes might soon have a space in their squad for a striker, with Leonardo Ulloa apparently a target for Sunderland, who have been told to offer at least £10m if they are to have any chance of success.
There’s good news and bad news for Gareth Southgate. Well, good news, very good news and mildly disappointing news, really. The good news is that he’s going to be England’s next permanent manager, and the very good news is that the salary he’s been getting for taking charge of the Under-21s – £500,000 a year – is going to be doubled at a stroke. The less good news is that Sam Allardyce was getting three times as much and still wanted to be earning more.
To be fair, though, there’s still some uncertainty about Southgate’s likely terms, with the Times saying he’ll be paid a round £1m, but the Mirror and the Telegraph suggesting he’ll be offered £1.5m-a-year and a contract overflowing with “big bonuses and incentives”. Talking of contracts, Mesut Özil is going to sign a new one that’ll pay him £200,000 a week, but Harry Kane and Hugo Lloris aren’t going to put pen to paper at Tottenham unless the club break their wage structure and offer them at least £120,000 a week.
Former Manchester United wonderkid turned English football outcast Ravel Morrison, currently languishing at Lazio where he has played seven minutes of first-team football in the last year, is wanted by Hull, whose manager Mike Phelan insists Morrison “is a talented boy” – though the fact that his asking price is only £600,000 probably adds to his appeal, as does the fact that however much you pay him you’ll probably get most of it back again in fines. “He’s had his ups and downs but I know what he’s got to offer,” Phelan concluded.
Which came first dept: does Chicago Fire’s interest in Bastian Schweinsteiger genuinely exist or did someone at the Sun come up with the “Bastian eyes Fire escape” headline and decide it was too good not to use?
Celtic have joined the chase for Charlton’s promising young centre-back Ezri Konsa, a competition that already features Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool and both Manchester clubs
Wayne Rooney was so happy with Southgate’s management of last week’s World Cup qualifying win over Scotland that he reportedly stayed on at the team’s hotel after most of the England party had left, got extremely merry on beer and wine and then invaded a wedding. “He was so friendly at first we thought it might be a lookalike and we were being wound up,” a guest told the Sun. “He was really [drunk]. He was not a pretty sight by the time he left around 1am.” Despite his partying proclivities, new MLS franchise Los Angeles FC are hoping he will sign for them in time for their first fixture in about 18 months. “We will see if players of his status and reputation are interested,” says the club’s owner, Tom Penn. “He is one of 10 names we are looking at.” If the team is to be at all successful, Penn should probably look at at least 11 names, really.