The Athletic

Welcome to the Athletic

Welcome to the Athletic Football podcast, I'm Mark Chapman, coming up a little later in the pod.

We'll discuss Antonio Conte's future at Tottenham,

ahead of a huge North London

Derby against Arsenal this week. And we'll speak to our Italian football writer James Horncastle

about the two Milan teams battling for this area, our title race. First up, though, on the pod,

we're joined by the Athletics, David Ornstein and Adam Crafton, two big stories about the futures

of two big players in your

column this week. David, Erling Harland, first up, that's a done deal, yes?

Yeah, the way it's been described to me, Mark, is that this situation is done and dusted now.

By that, we don't mean it's completed, but Erling Harland is going to be signing for Manchester City.

We initially reported,

I think it was last month, that initial personal terms had been agreed between City and

Arland and it just needed to be formalised and finalised and put into ink. That part of things

is now complete. So all that needs to be done is City paying the release clause, conducting medicals, and that sort of thing. And therefore, it's more of a formality. The main hurdle was the personal terms and the rest will follow in due course. The clubs have been in contact and the vibe I get from sources in Germany is that Dortmund perhaps perhaps somewhat surprisingly, have viewed that as being

cordial so far. They can't really do much about the situation, to be fair, and that Dortmund expect

in the coming days to receive notification from city of city's intention to activate the release clause in Erling Harlan's contract.

And once that happens, it will escalate very quickly and announcements will have to be made.

And that's why confirmation, as things stand, is expected this week.

And it will all lead to Erling Harlem becoming a Manchester City player

once you're able to register and link up with them for preseason.

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