A week ago Catalan newspaper Sport claimed a €20m offer from Manchester City had arrived at Espanyol for Aaron Martin, with Pep Guardiola wanting to add another fullback to his squad.
Within hours, the rest of the Spanish sport media, and crucially slightly more reliable outlets, made nonsense of the Sport reports and said no offer from Manchester City had arrived for Aaron.
Sport continued to stick to their guns, insinuating they had different information to everyone else, but then Espanyol’s Ramon Robert publicly stated there’d been no offer from Manchester City for the player.
In their Saturday edition it’s explained that Manchester City don’t make official offers until they’ve actually agreed a price in negotiations. So, Guardiola’s side are said to be in talks with Espanyol, and will only produce an actual offer once a price is agreed.
It’s one way of backtracking.
Manchester City had ‘just slipped the €20m’ into a call when contacting Espanyol about a price for Aaron.
