Paper Round: Mauricio Pochettino goads Antonio Conte over Chelsea signing Alvaro Morata

It's Wednesday's Paper Round... The papers today are reporting that Mauricio Pochettino has been trash talking his Premier League rivals with his thoughts on the transfer window so far.

Poch goads Conte over second fiddle Morata

Mauricio Pochettino was getting into the spirit of things on Tuesday with some light trash-talking around recent acquisitions made by his top-four Premier League rivals. First up was a massive dig at Chelsea boss Antonio Conte, who had some choice words himself last week regarding the ambition – or lack thereof – of Premier League runners-up, Spurs. Poch claimed that Chelsea’s big money new boy, 24-year-old Alvaro Morata, had first declined to join the North London club – on the basis that he didn’t want to play second fiddle to Golden Boot winner, and coincidentally number one on Conte’s striker wish-list, Harry Kane. Ouch.

Mauricio Pochettino speaks on Walker sales

Walker’s price tag has resulted in jibes from all over the footballing world complaining of “dangerous” amounts of cash being spent in the Transfer window and poor value for money represented by the signing. Poch echoed this sentiment on Tuesday as he told reporters: “We have seen the best of Kyle with Tottenham.”

 

Our view: No doubt City over paid for the services of Kyle Walker but today the market isn't fair enough. Clubs are reluctant to sell their top players, so any club that so desire a player from another club have to pay through their nose. This is evident in United signing 29-year-old from Chelsea for a fee of £40 million. Monaco is also a case study when they sold Mendy to City for £54 million pounds.

United agree terms with banned Aurier

Manchester United are said to have agreed – in principle – a £27m deal for Paris Saint-Germain Serge Aurier to join Old Trafford. The only problem with this is that the defender is currently banned from entering the country. Aurier hit the headlines last year after he was unable to attend his club’s Champions League game against Arsenal after he was denied entry to the UK thanks to a conviction for assaulting a police officer outside a nightclub. The 24-year-old is said to be hoping for a better outcome after his appeal against the conviction is heard in French courts, next week.

 

Our view: Aurier to United? Some kind of good news but his indiscipline is something to be considered by Mourinho. If he does move to United, he will provide competition for Valencia at wing back but what happens to the future of the likes of Chris Smalling, Phil Jones and Ashley Young.