Manchester United medical cock-up news here as Patrick Dorgu will be left with only about 48 hours to complete a medical. Tick-tock.
LIVE blog bingo
When you are a Sport Central Audience Writer (every young aspiring journalist’s dream) tasked with a LIVE transfer blog, you must have a checklist:
Transfer ✔
Agreement ✔
Medical ✔
Amid ✔
So congratulations to the Manchester Evening News SCAW Jack Flintham for this doozy:
‘Man United transfer news LIVE – Mathys Tel ‘agreement’ as medical planned amid Garnacho twist’
Does it matter that the Mathys Tel ‘agreement’ is with Spurs rather than Manchester United? Does it balls.
Does it matter that the ‘medical planned’ is not connected to Tel (whose ‘agreement’ is not with Manchester United, remember) but with Patrick Dorgu? Hell no.
It’s a job magnificently well done. Or it would be if they had remembered to add the words ‘Marcus’ and ‘Rashford’.
Over at the Express, they got the e-mail about the power of a promised medical…
‘Transfer news LIVE: Man Utd medical today, £13m Chelsea deal, Watkins to Arsenal’
Just a shame then that the first mention of a ‘medical’ is this in a section about Dorgu: ‘The player is yet to complete a medical, which has been rescheduled for the weekend.’
Sure they just forgot to change the headline…
How bizarre? Not at all…
Talking of that rescheduled medical for Patrick Dorgu, the only details we have are these…
🚨 Patrick Dorgu’s medical at Manchester United to be re-scheduled as could now take place over the weekend.
No issues or problems as deal has been agreed but just due to documents/contracts Dorgu’s expected to fly to England over the weekend. pic.twitter.com/UsUKfwBq83
— Fabrizio Romano (@FabrizioRomano) January 30, 2025
So what the actual f*** is going through the minds of somebody at MailOnline to come up with this:
‘Man United suddenly RESCHEDULE Patrick Dorgu medical for bizarre reason – with just days left to secure Ruben Amorim’s new £33m-rated man’
The ‘bizarre reason’ is that the documents and contracts are not yet ready. That’s not ‘bizarre’, it’s paperwork.
Sometimes things are just not very interesting. And whisper it, but sometimes there’s no need for CAPITALS.
But there are no clicks in paperwork, so we have to pretend there is now some heightened sense of danger…
‘Now a sense of jeopardy has been injected into the day due to the medical delay and the 20-year-old is only expected to fly to England over the weekend.
‘It was pushed back because the relevant documentation and contracts were not completed on time for the original test.
‘The transfer window slams shut at 11pm on Monday, February 3, meaning United cannot afford for there to be too many hold-ups.’
Never mind that clubs regularly manage to complete transfers despite not making bids until six or seven hours before the deadline, we are supposed to believe that ‘a sense of jeopardy has been injected’ by United giving themselves a little over 48 hours to complete a medical. Oooh, will they pull it off? It’s going to be close…
Tribal Football go even further, claiming: ‘Man Utd medical delayed for Dorgu due to forms cock-up.’
Their source? The Mail of course.
Draw specialists
The Champions League play-off draw was exactly that: A draw for the Champions League play-offs.
And yet, we all have to pretend that we have somehow learned so much more about Arsenal and Liverpool’s opponents too.
‘Man City handed nightmare Real Madrid clash as Arsenal edge towards last 16 tie with former Champions League winners,’ say The Sun, despite Arsenal being in exactly the same position as they were before the draw, with Juventus, PSV, Feyenoord and AC Milan still the possible opposition. They haven’t ‘edged’ anywhere.
The Mirror tell us ‘Liverpool, Villa and Liverpool’s path to the final becomes clearer’. Nope. Still any one of those four clubs detailed here.
They say that ‘former Liverpool star Stephen Warnock fears for Arsenal after they discovered their potential quarter-final opponents’. Except they absolutely didn’t. This is just getting weird now.
Mind you, even the Telegraph opt for a headline (on Google anyway, they’re not daft) of ‘Champions League draw live: Liverpool, Arsenal, Man City, Villa, Celtic learn their fate’.
We know nobody clicks on Manchester City stories, but this is the Champions League draw FFS.
