Barcelona's bid to keep Thiago fails - report

Barcelona's last-ditch attempt to keep Thiago, which we discussed earlier, has failed, according to a report just published in the Daily Mail.

The Mail's story is light on info, but claims Thiago is not guaranteed playing time and will choose to move to Manchester United.

This is pretty good news, obbviously, since if it's true that would seem to be the last real obstacle out of the way. As we said, it's not as though a player decides to leave a club like Barcelona on a whim - regardless of what promises they make, the situation exists because Cesc Fabregas, Xavi, and Andres Iniesta are already at the club. And that's not going to change.

Hopefully this will be done as soon as possible, but we'll be surprised if it happens before the middle of next week, one way or the other. As we've also said before, the Mail tends to have a pretty good record with United-related news. No other papers have so far backed up the this report, but if they do, we'll post them in this storystream.