Paper Round: Alexis Sanchez and Kyle Walker Manchester City bound after Pep Guardiola's £100m spree

The Mirror reports that Manchester City players are “confident” boss Pep Guardiola has landed his top two transfer targets, Tottenham defender Kyle Walker and Arsenal forward Alexis Sanchez. The newspaper reports that Guardiola could splash out £100 million on the pair, gazumping the likes of Bayern Munich and Paris Saint-Germain who are both said to be interested in Chile international, Sanchez.

Elsewhere, The Sun reports that, as Guardiola gets ready for a clear-out to complete the restructuring of his squad that began last summer after his appointment, goalkeeper Willy Caballero has been offered a new contract. The 35-year-old is out of contract this summer along with a number of other City players. Caballero has made just 47 appearances during his three seasons at the club, the bulk of which came this season after Claudio Bravo failed to deliver. According to the newspaper, Caballero will however wait to see if Guardiola signs another keeper to replace Bravo before he commits.

Paper Round’s view: If recent transfer windows have taught us anything, it’s that there’s often no smoke without fire when it comes to persistent rumours such as these, and Sanchez is a name that frequently comes up amid talk of City’s signing ambitions. That said Sanchez’s name comes up quite a lot in general at the minute, doesn’t it? But no one expects him to stay on at Arsenal after this season’s car crash and he has worked with Guardiola before.

As for the team’s defensive reinforcements, Yorkshireman Walker, who has recently dropped out of Spurs’ starting XI on a couple of occasions, is rumoured to be keen to return to the north of England – perhaps he could join Sanchez for country walks with Atom and Humber? Meanwhile, Caballero is certainly short on competition, with keepers causing headaches for a number Premier League clubs, such as Liverpool, at present. And we can probably safely say Bravo doesn’t pose a huge threat to his starting spot.

[Read the full story about Pep’s spending spree here]

[Read the full story about Willy Caballero here]

The Mirror reports that Gareth Southgate will face a dilemma this week as he prepares to announce his squad for England’s June fixtures. With England set to face Scotland in a World Cup qualifier on June 10, followed by a friendly against France three days later, the source of this concern is said to be none other than Daniel Sturridge, who’s afflicted by yet another injury. Though Sturridge flew out to Australia with his team for an end-of-season jolly, sorry, we mean friendly, his “ongoing hip problem” remains a concern that Southgate will be closely monitoring, according to reports.

Paper Round’s view: Sturridge being injured must be the least newsworthy story we’ve heard in a while, and similarly Danny Welbeck’s bad toe surely can’t be seen as the biggest cross the England team has to bear. An injured Jermaine Defoe could be seen as a more pressing concern right now, though thankfully one Southgate doesn’t yet have to contend with (yes, we’re surprised to be writing that, too). Nonetheless with the likes of Harry Kane and Marcus Rashford on sparkling form, not to mention midfield reinforcement by way of Dele Alli, perhaps we should start worrying about that England defence…

[Read the full story here]

With Manchester United’s upcoming Europa League final dominating Wednesday’s back pages in the wake of Monday night’s horrific attack on the club’s home city, local rivals Manchester City also made the news as midfielder Yaya Toure pledged £100,000 for the victims of the attack. Along with his agent, Dimitri Seluk, the pair made the contribution on Tuesday as Seluk was quoted as saying: “Yaya is from the Ivory Coast and I am from Russia, but we want to do what we can for Manchester."

Paper Round’s view: Speaking on Tuesday, Seluk was also quoted as saying: “At times like this football means nothing. Manchester is not City or United at this moment, the people are together as one and we want to help them.” We couldn’t agree more.

[Read the full story here]