Hold on a minute. Did Manchester City – the richest and most decadent football club in the land – just pass up the chance to sign one of the Premier League’s best players for a cut-price fee and pave the way for him to move to their fiercest rivals Manchester United? Did that really just happen?

It doesn’t sound right; it sounds fishy. It’s like whenever the Conservative party launches a generous new policy to help poor people. There’s clearly a catch somewhere – some way that Britain’s financial services industry will benefit most from the new policy – we just have to work out what it is.

So what exactly are Manchester City playing at here? The Sun has a theory.

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The tabloid claims that Pep Guardiola’s cunning plan all along has been to let United have Alexis Sanchez so that he can have a free run at Jose Mourinho’s first true love, Antoine Griezmann.

City have reportedly been chatting to Atletico Madrid about a sensational swap deal that would see the France forward coming to the Etihad, with Sergio Aguero going in the opposite direction.

Griezmann will be available for £85m at the end of the season, while City apparently value Aguero at £60m – so the Spanish side would get a nice wodge of cash out of the deal too.

Is Griezmann a better player than either Aguero or Sanchez? That’s highly debatable, but Guardiola is said to be a “big fan” of the Frenchman, and he knows more about football than you do.

Guardiola is also set to spend some of the money he didn’t spend on Sanchez on Aymeric Laporte. The Telegraph says City will activate the Athletic Bilbao centre-back’s £57m release clause and sign him “before the end of the transfer window”, which is bad news for former City target Jonny Evans.

Arsenal line up double swoop

The West Brom defender will, however, probably get the second prize of joining Arsenal instead, after Gunners boss Arsene Wenger “hinted” that he may sign the Northern Irishman this month (Express).

Wenger has also been tipped to make a £9m move for the 20-year-old Brazilian “wonderkid” Maycon (Sun). The Corinthians midfielder, who has been tracked by Gunners scouts “for years”, is not to be confused with other Arsenal target Malcom, or the former Inter right-back Maicon, or the Lebanese-born pop star Mika.

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Meanwhile, Man Utd’s latest attempt to sign a player – any player – from Real Madrid has led them to the Croatian midfielder Mateo Kovacic, who Jose Mourinho has apparently identified as a replacement for the ageing Michael Carrick (Mirror).

Elsewhere, Feyenoord’s 27-year-old Danish striker Nicolai Jorgensen is “interested” is making a £14m move to Newcastle United (Chronicle), Liverpool flop Lazar Markovic has been offered an Anfield escape route by Lokomotiv Moscow (Mirror) and house-hunting Alexis Sanchez has taken a tour of a five-bedroom mansion in Greater Manchester that comes “with its own piano room” (Mail). Can Alexis play the piano? No, but THAT’S NOT THE POINT.