Today’s rumours remembered to put their bins out
While their new manager settles into his new role it looks like calamity begins at home for Chelsea’s stars, with two of Stamford Bridge’s England aces earning newspaper coverage today for their badneighbourliness. Residents of the area where Ashley Cole has rented out an LA holiday mansion for the summer have complained about the state of his rubbish bins, which are overflowing with pizza cartons and KFC wrappers and spilling garbage onto the sidewalk (as it’s known there). One horrified neighbour told the Sun: “It stinks. It’s disgusting.” The waste receptacles are thus vying with a certain Qatari football administrator for the title of football’s most unpopular Bin. One guest at the non-stop Cole house party, Manchester chauffeur boss Curtis Codrington, revealed intimate details of the scene inside the mansion when he tweeted: “Bottles till u drop LA wooo.” Meanwhile neighbours of the west London residential mansion which Frank Lampard is busy extending despite local protests have complained about the state of his building works. One neighbour told the Sun: “No one is happy about it. It just seems insensitive. It’s going to be months of noise.”
Months of noise: it’s the transfer window in a nutshell.
Back to Portugal, then, where the Porto president Jorge Pinto da Costa has warned new Chelsea manager, André Villas-Boas, that he’ll have to spend big money to get the team’s stars to follow him to London. And to prove he’s not kidding he slapped a £62m combined price tag on the striker Falcao and the playmaker João Moutinho. But Chelsea could make all of that and more by dumping Lampard, Didier Drogba, Nicolas Anelka, Florent Malouda, Michael Essien, Salomon Kalou and Mikel John Obi. Perhaps they already have been dumped — it would help to explain why Ashley Cole’s bins are so full.
Carlos Tevez’s £150,000-a-week salary has scared off potential suitors Internazionale. “He is a great player, but his salary means it is out of the question,” said the sporting director, Marco Branca. Equally unlikely to move to Italy is Gaël Clichy, who has informed Arsenal that he would prefer to replace Wolves-bound-and-anyway-rubbish Paul Konchesky at Liverpool rather than move to rival bidders Roma — even though the Italians’ bid is, at £7m, a full £2m more than Liverpool’s. Manchester City are also seeking a left-back, but after mulling over an offer for Leighton Baines they have made Lyon’s £20m-rated Aly Cissokho their top target.
Roma are engaged in another battle with the English, vying with Blackburn for the German-American midfielder Jermaine Jones. Schalke’s £5.5m-rated ace spent the end of last season on loan at Ewood Park but might consider Rome a more interesting destination than Lancashire for cultural reasons. As the Mill sees it, it’s a tough choice — one has several ancient monuments including the Spanish Steps; the other has several ancient monuments including the Spanish full-back Míchel Salgado. Talking of full-backs, though, Blackburn want the Russia right-back Alexander Anyukov and have £4m to prove it.
Steve Bruce plans to splash the first £4m of the Jordan Henderson cash on Wes Brown, though Aston Villa and Everton might join the bidding for the former England star. Liverpool have matched Sunderland’s £8m offer for Ipswich’s 18-year-old hotshot Connor Wickham, and the teams might also battle it out for Wigan’s Charles N’Zogbia after Kenny Dalglish was appalled by Aston Villa’s £19m valuation of first choice left-wing target Stewart Downing. The new man at the Villa helm, Alex McLeish, wants to scoop Germinal Beerschot midfielder Victor Wanyama from under the noses of Swansea and Celtic.
Martin Jol’s rebuilding work at Fulham will begin with the signing of Espanyol’s 27-year-old goalkeeper Carlos Kameni. “The Premier League is a fantastic league and very competitive for keepers,” trilled the Cameroon ace. West Bromwich want Real Mallorca’s £2.5m Cameroon striker Pierre Webó, and are considering offloading Gabriel Tamas to Lazio on a season-long loan. And Tottenham’s hunt for a goalscorer could lead them to Diego Forlán, who is available at a knock-down £7m because he’s 32 and Atlético Madrid don’t really want him any more. The Uruguayan has already rejected a move to Galatasaray and Atlético president, Enrique Cerezo, subtly suggested that his first choice might be a move to England: “It looks like his first choice will be England.”
Non-football news now, and 33,000 Texas Rangers baseball fans have broken a world record by simultaneously wearing sunglasses in the dark. George W Bush was one of them. And here’s a philosophical question for readers of the Mill to mull: is there a level of fame and fortune beyond which the idea of a wedding gift list becomes less a little bit irritating and more just totally obnoxious? Millionaire supermodel Kate Moss is bravely attempting to find us an answer, by preparing a list for her forthcoming nuptials that includes 14 crystal ashtrays at a total cost of £3,360, plus a £35 rabbit-shaped jelly mould.
ChelseaSimon Burntonguardian.co.uk
