Barcelona to sign Rooney for £12m plus Thiago, says report from Spain

Sport run with the lead story tomorrow that Barcelona will swap Thiago for £12m for Wayne Rooney. So there it is.

It's hard to know what to make of this. There were suggestions that Barcelona had floated out some hints they were going to sign Rooney to annoy United as retaliation for their courting of Thiago, but whether Barca are sad, vindictive and desperate enough to do that is another matter. If any club IS sad, vindictive and desperate enough to do that it would be them, but that's not quite the same thing.

Anyway, while I think this is a pretty good deal - for "£12m" you can read "a helluva lot more", owing to Rooney's insane wages - Glazernomics mean that we shouldn't be too bothered about how much or little we're buying or selling anyone for. And the second thing we shouldn't be too bothered about is that this whole thing doesn't have much backing it up at the moment.

That's not to say it certainly won't happen. You may scoff at the notion of Barca wanting Rooney, but try a Twitter search for 'Thiago Rooney' and you'll see a lot of Cules delighted at the prospect. A different article from Sport earlier today, suggesting that Barca would move for Rooney (which we didn't tell you about because it was mostly rehashing quotes from The Sun, and quite frankly you should have better things to be doing with your life) claimed that Rooney's touch, among other things has been described as "phenomenal", so if this does go ahead I'd love to see their reaction to finding out the reality over that one.

Anyway, most probably, this is part of some smokescreen or maneouvre from Barcelona as they attempt to stop United signing Thiago by any means necessary (which is, of course, looking increasingly impossible.) It could happen. It just probably won't.