Today’s tittle-tattle is cruising for a bruising

The Mill was kept up all night by sirens. Not the mythological seductive scantily clad kind who try to tempt you into the nearest river for a bit of how’s-your-father, mind (The Mill’s not been that lucky since it tripped over a rabbit’s foot sticking out of a cracked paving stone and landed a £4,000 insurance claim). Nah, these were the very real, ear-splitting, somebody’s-in-trouble-Guv type that blare out at 3am WHEN THERE IS NO TRAFFIC ON THE ROAD SO WHY BOTHER? variety. But hey, you’re a Mill who came up in the wrong end of town, whaddya gonna’ do?

On the subject of sirens, Manchester City’s Italian beauty Roberto Mancini is doing a pretty good impression of one right now. The long-haired temptress is keeping cool in the heat by fanning himself with £20m outside Stamford Bridge and refusing to leave until Didier Drogba accompanies him on the Virgin Pendolino back home to Manchester.

If Drogba’s passion is stirred then expect Carlo Ancelotti to turn up at Anfield with a wheelbarrow (a very, very big one at that) of cash and start throwing it over the Shankly Gates until enough of it lands to secure the services of Liverpool’s beautiful-but-knacked Spain striker Fernando Torres. And if Drogba isn’t turned on, Mancini will increase the size of his cash fan to £35m and direct his attention towards Internazionale’s brooding striker Mario Balotelli.

And now he’s happily married, the free-agent Sol Campbell has just about plucked up the courage to tell the new Mrs Campbell that they’re going to be setting up home in Sunderland. The Mill doesn’t know how long you have to be wed before you can avoid an annulment, but expects the happy couple haven’t yet reached that mark.

Over at Old Trafford, Sir Alex Ferguson has been busy mixing messages in a huge bowl and sending them out to assorted confused tabloid hacks. The Sun simultaneously has him pushing “hard to get the cash” for the fleet-footed Werder Bremen and Germany midfielder Mezut Ozil as well as admitting that Manchester United are “comfortable with the squad we’ve got.”

West Ham are hoping to scupper Liverpool’s attempts to sign the Nice and France striker Loic Remy by upping their offer for the player from the club’s asking price of £12m to £15m. With the Merseyside club about as indebted as a randy stag would be to his best mate after finding out that he’s switched their weekend away from Amsterdam to Eastbourne, last year’s relegation-battlers could successfully gazump Liverpool and prove that football is, well, just silly these days, isn’t it?

If he finds enough grease to squeeze his avuncular frame through the Craven Cottage entrance, big Martin Jol will write David James, Robbie Keane and Stephen Ireland’s names on a piece of paper, neatly fold it and insert it into the top pocket of Mohamed Al-Fayed’s suit jacket, before patting the 77-year-old Fulham owner on the cheek passive-aggressively.

North of the border, financially-challenged Rangers want goal-shy free-agent Marlon Harewood to prove just how bad the SPL is by actually scoring real goals in the league so they can make a good case for the Old Firm joining the Premier League. While Celtic will let Aiden McGeady run all the way down the hard-shoulder of the M74 and M6 until he ends up in the arms of his former manager Martin O’Neill at Aston Villa. That is, of course, after he’s sent £10m worth of beans to Parkhead.

And finally, Joey Barton (now there’s a man who knows his sirens) reckons England is the team for him. After watching Fabio Capello’s crack selection make the Jabulani ball look like it was triangular in South Africa, the fast-food-shop bothering Newcastle United player reckons every midfielder in the country must fancy their chances of playing for England (yes, even that fat lad called Macca who plays in the Liverpool Zingari League). “Watching some of the performances at the World Cup over the summer I think that, on form, I’m as good as anybody in the country.” After looking as rusty as an oil-starved garden gate in his 15 Championship appearances last season and regularly wasting possession, the Mill would have to agree.

Transfer windowManchester CityChelseaGregg Roughleyguardian.co.uk

Today’s tall tales are too spartan for kindergarten

As Janet Jackson and Luther Vandross told us in their seminal 1992 hit, The Best Things In Life Are Free. Punching someone in the face, lifting a packet of T-Bone Steak Roysters from the local shop or putting a brick through the TV every time Tim Lovejoy comes on: none cost so much as a single piece of copper yet all serve to immeasurably brighten your day.

Now, it seems, you can add Joe Cole to that list. Normally Bosman transfers elicit about as much interest as a chess match at an orgy, but Cole is a Pwopah Player and as such is Big News. Today, according to some rag whose name we forget, he is being strongly linked with Arsenal, who have joined a lengthening queue of those who want a piece of Cole. It includes Manchester United, Tottenham, Manchester City, and that bloke who apparently sowted him out in a row over that Page 3 girl back in the day.

Now that Arsène Wenger has finally realised that Manuel Almunia is actually a circus clown trapped in a goalkeeper’s body, Arsenal also want Fulham’s septuagenarian stopper Mark Schwarzer. Fulham will replace Schwarzer with David James, and that’s where the property chain ends.

On the subject of goalkeepers, Steve Bruce is a sucker for a man who wears a cap at a jaunty angle, and will consequently replace Craig Gordon with Wigan’s Chris Kirkland.

Carlo Ancelotti and Zlatan Ibrahimovic are both staying at the same holiday resort in Florida. When they pass each other in reception/the jacuzzi/the sauna, they say “hello”, because that’s what polite, metrosexual people do. But 2+2=977 in the Mill’s circles, and now Ibrahimovic is on his way to do whatever it is he does at Stamford Bridge next season.

Another essentially useless plank, Newcastle’s Andy Carroll, may be moving to Birmingham or Stoke. And Celtic have shown they really mean business next season by, er, bidding £500,000 for Stoke’s Liam Lawrence.

A centre-forward who is actually very decent, Burnley’s Steven Fletcher, will join Wolves for £7m today. And Roy Hodgson is being nice and genteel and loveable in an attempt to woo two other centre-forwards: Frédéric Piquionne of Lyon and Hannover’s Jan Schlaudraff.

Oh, and Real Madrid are going to usher in a new era of anti-galacticism by signing, er, Angel Di María and Steven Gerrard.