Today’s blurb has forgotten how this all works
Today’s Sun has a back page EXCLUSIVE: and not just, on this occasion, the kind of EXCLUSIVE that everybody else also has, the kind of INCLUSIVE EXCLUSIVE that involves five barked paragraphs of fudged and rabid speculation EXCLUSIVELY smeared across the nation’s communal backpage, the newspaper equivalent of shouting and waving your arms around and making your eyes go googly in the hope of very briefly hoodwinking enough people into thinking they need to pay attention to whatever it is you’re shouting about. No. This is a real actual exclusive EXCLUSIVE.
“JOSE EYES LAMPS. José Mourinho wants to offer Chelsea a sensational swap deal that would rescue Frank Lampard from his Stamford Bridge nightmare,” the Sun explains, using the term “Stamford Bridge nightmare” to describe a magnificent Chelsea career taking in three league titles over 10 years and over 400 appearances, albeit bookended by a few games on the bench at the age of 33.
Mourinho wants to offer the former Spanish Under-21 international Esteban Granero in exchange, the kind of so-so 24-year-old £6m-rated, everyday-brilliant midfield prompter Spanish clubs churn out by the skip-load these days. But all of whom, to be completely clear on this, are some way short of a 33-year-old Englishman who tends to spend a lot of time lurking on the Stamford Bridge bench in his dotage having what the Sun describes as “a torrid time”.
In other unlikely old transfer news the morning’s Daily Mail reports that “the agent of 31-year-old Juventus striker Amauri insists Tottenham are one of the sides to have expressed an interest in his client.” The key phrase here is “the agent of…”, a detail that’s right up there with “the man employed to sell time share apartments in rural Spain to confused old age pensioners insists that time share apartments in rural Spain are an ideal investment for confused pensioners happy just to talk to someone on the phone and such a nice young man with manners not like some you see these days”. Or “man who sells perfume from a piece of chipboard on top of a crate in Oxford Street insists ‘oh yer, it’s all top branded merchandise, fifty quid that one Alarming Humidity by Jean Paul de Gaulle-Paul’”. Amauri is available on a free transfer. His sweating, sherry-stinking, spray-tanned agent Ernesto Bronzetti (real name) is quoted as saying: “Tottenham are interested in Amauri, as are three Italian clubs.” QPR and Fulham are also keen.
Moroccan goal ace Marouane Chamakh “admits” he may have to leave Arsenal. Chamakh has started only one Premier League match all season. “I am 27 … I cannot stay like this forever,” Chamakh said yesterday frowning into the mirror and developing, for the first time, genuine misgivings about the age-appropriateness of his teased and primped boyband-fin.
According to several of today’s papers, taking their lead from the Sundays, Real Madrid are “eyeing” not just Lamps, but in the Mail’s words “a summer swoop for Arsenal striker Robin van Persie“, which would at least make some sense. Van Persie is out of contract in 18 months. Madrid can offer him £250,000 a year. The Mill invites you to, in a very real sense, to “do” the maths.
And in other creatively conjured Chelsea news Alexandre Pato and/or Robinho could both be on their way to Stamford Bridge in January if Milan manage to throw enough money at exiled Manchester City carpetbagger Carlos Tevez. Robinho, who doesn’t run around much and Pato, who runs around a lot, have “both been targets” for Chelsea in the past, albeit only really in rumour-land where everyone is a target of everyone else until explicitly proven otherwise.
Blackburn and Wolves both want to sign the Leeds striker Ross McCormack in January. McCormack is 25 and has scored 11 goals this season. And André Villas-Boas has “taken his team into lockdown” in the days leading up to tonight’s juddering, squealing, thunderously overwrought petro-collision with fellow carbon moneybag newbies Manchester City. After a series of “leaks”, ie. quite boring organisational information appearing in the newspapers, Villas-Boas has “banished the reserves from the first-team building at the club’s training ground”. This means Nicolas Anelka and Alex have to use the building next door to the first-team block at Cobham and they can’t even come in to use the toilets or banter awkwardly in the doorway.
In the Daily Mirror, Manchester United are “chasing Holland’s wonder boy Jetro Willems”, who is being lined up as “the next Patrice Evra”. Sir Alex Ferguson’s brother has been lurking about in the stands at PSV Eindhoven and compiling a file that presumably includes the words “rampaging left-back who will be extraordinarily good for about three seasons and then just sort of tail off, while appearing increasingly prone to spats and rucks and rumbles.” Willems is 17 and has played 20 senior games in Holland.
Meanwhile Big Eck McLeish wants to sign Big Bobby Zamora from Fulham. Zamora’s relationship with Big Martin Jol is described as “icy”, like an unhappy 1950s suburban marriage. And Doncaster want to sign the Argentinian striker Sebastiá Dubarbier from Lorient.
Real MadridChelseaArsenalTottenham HotspurJuventusManchester UnitedPSV EindhovenBarney Ronayguardian.co.uk
