Today’s extemporaneity would like a Geek Pie, please

Just as a bad workman always blames his tools, so a bad rumourmonger always blames his snouts. We’re not passing the buck, it was somebody else’s fault. Despite telling our team of hapless sniffers that we would cattle-prod them to within an inch of their future fatherhood prospects if they did not give us some premium juice this morning – Phil Brown to start an acid-skiffle group with Bez and Courtney Love, say, or Andrés Iniesta to Gillingham – we’re left drinking the same old watered-down rubbish. So let’s get on with it.

Chelsea are going to spend €40m to pip Barcelona and Real Madrid to the signing of the Benfica winger Angel di María, a man whose name sets the Mill in mind of Angel Delight and more innocent, benevolent times. Bananaman on TV, jumpers for goalposts, having our head flushed down the toilet twice a day by “Cropper” McNichol, being forced to sniff paint behind the bikesheds, silently weeping ourselves to sleep at night.

Everton’s manager David Moyes has told anyone who’ll listen that Jack Rodwell is going nowhere this summer. Given that Moyes is one of the hardest men ever to walk the earth, and once gave The Mill a prolonged attack of The Fear by simply making eye contact with us for 1.42 seconds, we’ll take his word for it.

In an attempt to get a greater grasp of the English culture, and having completely failed to understand the point of Loose Women and The One Show, Gianfranco Zola is planning to play a game of pass the “half-decent England goalkeeper” in the summer. If Robert Green decides to leave Upton Park, Zola will replace him with Joe Hart on a year-long loan, it says here.

Harry Redknapp is in the shower. And while he’s firmly scrubbing the luscious bubbles of Original Source Mint Shower Gel into his freshly waxed six-pack, he’s thinking about the 16-year-old Zambian left-back Emmanuel Mbola, who he wants to sign for £1m from Armenian side Yerevan. That actually sounds a bit Didier Baptiste to us, but our crack team of grizzled Armenian snouts assure us otherwise. In fact Mbola has already played 20 times for his country, having won his first cap as a foetus.

Oh, and Ashley Cole nearly swerved off whatever the Chelsea equivalent of the North Circular is when he learned he would be disciplined by Chelsea for reportedly doing extra training in his hotel room bedroom during away trips. He was just keeping fit! Cole may do one to Barcelona or Real Madrid as a consequence. “Ashley is having a rough time at the moment,” said a source. “If he and Cheryl get divorced, why would he want to stay in this country?” Loose Women?

ChelseaTottenham HotspurEvertonHarry RedknappDavid MoyesBenficaRob Smythguardian.co.uk