Sunday rumours

• The big one is the News of the World's claim that a £52million deal for David Villa will be tied up soon. His agents are coming to Manchester this week, apparently, and a 'source close to the deal' said "The Arabs have been impressed with him and Mark Hughes is convinced he will do well in English football. His agent will be flying in on Tuesday and there is every chance talks and a deal will be concluded by the end of the week." Valencia are in a terrible financial state at the moment, and will probably need to sell at least one of Villa and David Silva to stay afloat. I imagine though that Villa will want to hold on until the summer, when Real Madrid or Chelsea are more likely to go in for him.

• The NotW also has a piece about Danny Sturridge: saying that he'll sign a new five year deal on £30k/week within the next fortnight. This is slightly more than the wages mentioned in an article in the same 'paper about Sturridge in September (article here, my post on it here). Johnson, Hart and Richards all took a while for their five year deals to come through, so the fact that this is dragging out isn't a big deal. But in three weeks he'll be able to negotiate with other teams to leave on a Bosman in June.

• The Daily Star says we're going for a £20m bid for Franck Ribery. He's a pretty good player, but with Robinho, SWP and Petrov coming back it's not like wingers are a big priority. In fact, here are some other Bayern Munich players I'd rather go for first: Lukas Podolski, Mark van Bommel, Phillip Lahm (and I'm not a huge fan of his), City legend Daniel van Buyten and even Luca Toni.