Here we are. Just two days to go until some real, actual
football happens. Real football where people actually kick a ball
around and score goals rather than simply concocting extended
fictions, half-truths, lies and entire tabloid news stories based
around n neatly punning headline. But still the Mill stays true to
its course, like Sid James and Hattie Jacques serving a
seven-course lunch and making small talk about the polo season even
as Bernard Bresslaw's vicious Burpa artillery causes great chunks
of the British consulate's marble ceiling to crash down into the
soup course, and Charles Hawtrey gets covered in plaster dust as
just he sips at his glass of stage claret which is actually a
triple vodka-Ribena. Bring it on. Bring on your real, actual
football. The Mill refuses to be deflected from its mongering. This
is simply the Mill's way.
So in the Sun this morning Alex Ferguson is
keen to sign yet another inadequate and oddly jumpy goalkeeper who
can be talked up excitedly before chucking a couple in against
minor Premier League opposition, flapping in
the Carling Cup and eventually being sold to Panathinaikos. This
time it's 23-year-old FC Schalke keeper Manuel
Neuer, who, if past form is anything to go by, wears
flappy tracksuit bottoms and has a wild look in his eye.
Arsène Wenger has finally given up on poor old unhappy
Marouane Chamakh, who looks a bit like a Cristiano
Ronaldo, but with a greasy mullet. Arsenal fans "face a nail-biting
wait until Tuesday to see if Cesc Fábregas joins
Barcelona", which will probably involve ingesting most of their
toenails too, given that Tuesday is currently five days away.
Meanwhile, Alvaro Negredo of Real Madrid wants to join
Hull. "Alvaro likes the team and is keen to play for them
in the Premier League," says his sweating, squint-eyed,
halitosis-ridden Mr 10%.
In the Mirror, Chelsea have agreed a £4m deal
with Kosice for 20-year-old Serbian striker Nemanja
Matic, who frankly sounds a bit so-so, a bit Franco Di
Santo, a bit Scott Sinclair. Moustachioed Argentinian defender
Renato Civelli plans to "rekindle" his move to Blackburn Rovers.
But Michel Salgado, 56, won't be joining him.
Middlesborough hope to sell ambling Brazilian goalscoring
machine Afonso Alves. "A number of clubs are
closing in on the Brazilian misfit striker", many armed with
sticks, blowpipes and rudimentary wooden spears. Qatar is being
mentioned. And Roy Hodgson and David Moyes will "battle it
out" for Boro's Gary O'Neill using sharpened golfing
umbrellas, before switching to a high-speed kick-boxing duel after
Moyes is hurled though a plate glass window, then a gripping
knife-fight balanced high on the exposed top floor of a half built
office building, before Moyes is eventually hurled over the edge
just as it looks like he's finally got Hodgson where he wants him,
but pauses fatally to say something pointless and gloating,
allowing himself to be stabbed in the ankle by Hodgson's trusty
jungle boot knife before plummeting to his death looking sad and
resigned and somehow no longer evil but tragic and lost.
The Daily Star has 'Arry Redknapp "on the Moses trail", which is
either: a) a seven-day Sinai Ramada luxury coach tour of top Old
Testament attractions featuring daily buffet lunch and early
evening steel band Dead Sea Disco please bring Moses Trail
identification to claim free Burning Bush cocktail and plate of
Nazareth Nachos with house speciality Onan Guacamole; or b) an
attempt to sign Crystal Palace striker Victor
Moses, available for £5m.
Also in the Star, Portsmouth are favourites to
lure former Middlesbrough disappointment turned strangely cold-eyed
and sinister TV pundit Bolo Zenden out of his hot
tub. "Hull, Blackburn and Portsmouth have expressed an interest and
I am in talks with all those clubs," he said, holding three sets of
talks simultaneously using a wheelie chair that spins round
quickly.
In the Times, Michael Mancienne still thinks he's actually going
to play for Chelsea and has signed a new deal but also gone out on
loan to Wolves. The Daily Mail believes Fulham are on the verge of
signing vast, immobile, bull-necked garden statue Mark
Viduka. A move to Portsmouth has "collapsed" presumably
after Viduka briefly sat down on it.
On Goal.com, Bernd Schuster has told German
television that Real Madrid still want to sign cheeky,
loveable Bayern Munich scruff Franck Ribéry and will be back with
"a mammoth bid" this week. As will Chelsea. And Nadir
Belhadj has told Le Buteur magazine, France's leading
churned dairy spreads quarterly, that he might fancy a move to
Spurs to join up with old mucker and Fagin-like gangmaster 'Arry
Redknapp.