The world's nicest football manager, Manuel Pellegrini, has failed to land a quadruple this season for Manchester City, but his bosses, perhaps mindful that it was Vincent Kompany who was giving it the big talk, still have full confidence in the Chilean manager. They'll give him ££££££££££££s to spend this summer on the Porto centre-back Eliaquim Mangala, Cheik Tioté of Newcastle, and the order of a striker or two from a dead shiny catalogue featuring Radamel Falcao, Edinson Cavani and Diego Costa.

John Terry, who sent off Chico Flores of Swansea City last weekend, isn't quite ready to go into full-time refereeing yet. He'd like to play for Chelsea a while longer but has been told to accept a massive pay cut if he wants a new contract. Galatasaray are prepared to give him full whack, and tax-free to boot, plus the prospect of immersing himself in a new footballing and cultural environment. It should help the contract negotiations along if nothing else.

Arsenal are to make a £7m bid for the Eintracht Frankfurt defender Sebastian Jung. If we accept that each person can be categorised as either an introvert or extrovert, Jung should be considered the former, as he's more defensive minded than modern attacking full-backs such as Philipp Lahm or Dionysus.

Juventus are gathering together £7m themselves, with a view to palming off Southampton with it. They fancy keeping hold of the on-loan Dani Osvaldo for good at half price, though they'd like to send back the bowler hat, if that's OK. Rangers are preparing a £15.99 bid for that.

Borussia Dortmund midfielder Marco Reus received a mid-match verbal rocket from his own goalkeeper Roman Weidenfeller the other day, as the £40m-rated midfielder couldn't be bothered to press the opposition. That's alerted Manchester United boss David Moyes, who can't be doing with the tactic half the time himself. United are also in the hunt for the aforementioned Mangala, as well as Benfica defender Ezequiel Garay.

Liverpool are still not sure about Simon Mignolet and accordingly have made inquiries about Ajaccio's Mexico goalkeeper Guillermo Ochoa. Milan are also interested, which in the past would have put paid to Liverpool's hopes, but it's not 1987 in Serie A any more.

Aston Villa are up for sale for £250m, but nobody seems particularly interested at the moment. Bayern Munich want their 16-year-old defensive prospect Easah Suliman, though.

And while it's not looking good right now for the big man up there on the hill, there are rumours he's planning to turn things round by pulling off a big crowd-pleasing number on Sunday. Details are sketchy, but think Arsenal reaching the Cup final after a tricky few years, only even more spectacular and outlandish.