It’s been 80 years since Manchester United signed a player directly from Liverpool, but it’s being claimed Mohamed Salah is a transfer target for Jose Mourinho this summer. Don Balon report of Mourinho’s interest in a £175million transfer raid for Salah, who has been on fire this season to score 37 goals in all competitions for the Reds.
So given that Liverpool haven’t sold a player to United and Salah is one of their best players in recent times, we’d say this ranks pretty as high on the list of many of the unlikely transfer rumours you often see flying about. Paddy Power may think it’s just 33/1 that the most insane move ever could happen, but given that Leicester City were priced at 5000/1, here’s a list of things we’d judge as more likely to happen any time soon than Salah rocking up at Old Trafford…
Leicester winning the league…again
Doing it once is nothing. Try doing it for a second time, Leicester, then we’ll be impressed.
England winning the World Cup on penalties
Sounds easy, doesn’t it? But remember that England …
a. always flop at tournaments and
b. almost always go out on penalties. If this happens, we could believe a summer move for Salah could follow.
Cristiano Ronaldo ‘doing an Aubameyang’
Could Cristiano Ronaldo do what Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang did at the weekend and give up a hat-trick by handing a penalty over to a team-mate? It doesn’t sound very Cristiano, that’s for sure, but we’d put it firmly ahead of Salah becoming a Red Devil.
Arsene Wenger actually quitting Arsenal
Like Salah moving to United, this is never going to happen. Except that, in theory, it actually might…eventually.
Sam Allardyce changing his name to Allardici
Big Sam once proclaimed that he’d have a better chance getting jobs at big clubs if he were called ‘Sam Allardici’. You’ve got to think it would be worth a try for him at some point…?
Luke Shaw being named Manchester United captain
We thought this was so unlikely we made it our April Fools’ Day joke this year, but expect Mourinho to do that before he successfully persuades Liverpool to sell him Salah.
PSG renaming themselves Neymar FC
You can totally imagine them doing this. PSG are the new kids on the block with more money than sense and there’s already talk that they could lose star player Neymar after just one season. If he asked for it, they’d totally do it.
Manchester City blowing the title from here
They’d pretty much have to lose every single one of their remaining seven games, but hey, got to be more likely than Salah joining United.
Ederson winning the Golden Boot
Given that the title is basically sewn up, one can easily imagine Pep Guardiola experimenting with moving his goalkeeper up front for a bit of fun in the final few games. We’ve seen how good the Brazilian is with his feet, so maybe he’s actually the best striker in the world and no one’s ever dared to try it? Well Pep seems like the kind of guy who might actually have the balls to do so, and whatever Pep tries usually works. It’s a tough task scoring 30 goals in seven games, but it seems a safer bet he’d overtake Salah than that the Egyptian will be a United player next season.
Nicklas Bendtner winning the Ballon d’Or
For services to banter, this would be richly deserved. The Dane may be Zlatan Ibrahimovic without the footballing talent, but maybe he’s right and he actually is the best player in the world and has just been hiding it *really* well up until now.