Man Utd AND Chelsea preferred by Delap as United aim to buck 60-year trend

Liam Delap would rather join Manchester United than Chelsea, or he would rather join Chelsea than Manchester United. It all depends whether you believe The Sun or… The Sun.

Delap of the gods

Seems a fair assumption that Ipswich’s relegation won’t have too much effect on Liam Delap’s prospects of remaining a Premier League player next season.

Lots of teams need a striker, he’s available for £30m, he’s young, he scored 12 league goals in a terrible team. Someone’s going to buy him, probably. And that someone is Man United or Chelsea, probably.

The Sun are taking no chances, though, and are hedging their bets to make sure they get it right.

The Sun, May 12:

LIAM DELAP reportedly has a ‘preferred club’ out of Manchester United and Chelsea. United and Chelsea are thought to be the biggest hitters in the race, with both teams seeking firepower. However, Delap is now said to favour one side over the other. According to talkSPORT, the 22-year-old would prefer to join United.

The Sun, May 13:

CHELSEA are increasingly confident of landing Ipswich Town striker Liam Delap despite interest from Manchester United. United are in the market for a new centre-forward but Delap, 22, is favouring a link-up with the Blues’ boss Enzo Maresca, his academy coach at Manchester City.

His clear number one preferred choice will be Arsenal by some point this afternoon.

Six appeal

We’ve all enjoyed the idea of Manchester United having the target of a top-six finish next season, with the Mirror quick to point out that teams leaping 10 places in the table from one season to the next is an unusual event managed only five times by anyone in 20-team Premier League seasons – or ‘FIVE times in history’ if you’re an overexcited Reach headline writer.

But we’re not sure pointing out that United’s own biggest Premier League leap is a mere three places ‘from seventh to fourth’ is all that relevant. The fact they’ve never finished below eighth is kind of the point.

When you look at the club’s entire history, not since 1964 has the club jumped ten spots in the league, and that needed the brilliance of Sir Matt Busby to be achieved.

Yes, but it also needed the non-brilliance of finishing 11th or lower the year before. United haven’t even had the opportunity for a 10-place jump since the final few years before football history officially began – and going from 13th in 1990 to sixth in 1991 feels at least vaguely adjacent to this latest supposed mission.

In all, since those far-off days of 1964, United have had a whopping five whole seasons where a 10-place top-flight finishing position jump was even possible, and in three of those only winning the league could have achieved it. And in one of those they did go from 11th to second, between 1987 and 1988.

So yes, a 10-place jump back into the top six next season seems unlikely and United probably won’t do it. But their own failure to achieve such a thing in over 60 years doesn’t really seem that damning.

United by numbers

Talking of Man United and numbers, the MailOnline have hit upon a theme today with the following THREE headlines all taking pride of place on their homepage.

TEN Man United players ‘have to go’ this summer, says Gary Neville, as he urges Sir Jim Ratcliffe to ‘pay to get them out’ of ‘graveyard’ of bad buys Man United legend Ryan Giggs claims ‘I don’t see a way back’ for FOUR club stars and admits one player ‘leaves a sour taste’ after impressing on loan Gary Neville claims only ONE Man United player would get in Tottenham’s team and reveals why he has a ‘sickly feeling’ for Europa League final

Just to tick these all off quickly: the TEN players is in fact ‘eight to 10’ by the time you get to the intro and only ‘five or six’ actually still under contract beyond this season by the time you get to Neville’s actual quote, the FOUR club stars are Marcus Rashford, Antony, Jadon Sancho and Tyrell Malacia so, well, yeah, probably right, and the Neville ‘sickly feeling’ reveal is… he thinks only ONE Man United player would get in Tottenham’s team. You just told us.

Snub knows

A genuinely baffling headline from the Mirror here, creating not so much a curiosity gap as a sense chasm.

Jurgen Klopp’s verdict on Xabi Alonso speaks volumes after Real Madrid snub

Good to know volumes are being spoken at least, that’s always good. But the rest of it is a puzzle. What Real Madrid snub? Who’s snubbing who exactly?

Infuriatingly, we have no choice but to read on to try and find out what’s occurring here.

Jurgen Klopp has hailed Xabi Alonso as a ‘standout’ manager as he prepares to take over at Real Madrid. The Spaniard has already confirmed that he will be leaving current side Bayer Leverkusen at the end of the summer.

Right, okay, fine. But where’s the snub? He’s going to Real Madrid. That is, if anything, the opposite of a snub.

Of course, we do here have the now-standard tabloid use of the word ‘as’ where instead of the usual dictionary meaning of ‘something that happens during the time when something else is taking place’ it in fact means ‘something that happens at literally any time other than the time when something else is taking place’.

Last season, in this specific example, when Xabi Alonso was busy winning the Bundesliga and pointedly not preparing to take over at Real Madrid or anywhere else. It was quite significant news at the time.

Yet still we get no nearer to this Real Madrid snub. Until, far later, when we eventually get this.

Ironically, Klopp might have actually talked himself out of contention for the Real Madrid job, with the Spanish side eventually moving for Alonso. It had long been reported that the former Liverpool boss was among their favoured candidates for the role.

So the snub is Real Madrid not giving the job to Jurgen Klopp, a man who expressed no interest in the job and who made it very clear when leaving Liverpool that he would not be returning to a frontline managerial job for some time and quite possibly ever? What a snub. What volumes spoken. What absolute bollocks.

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