The Monday Miscellany

It’s transfer deadline day today. I know, I can hardly stand the excitement either. The problem is, there are not enough surprise transfers any more. Gone are the days when the first thing you knew about a signing was when Ceefax put up a headline, in exactly the right number of letters to fill the screen; CHELSEA SEAL DI MATTEO SIGNING.

As a result, it’s now always easy to predict what will happen. Somebody who’s no longer a first team regular at a ‘Big Four’ team will leave, usually for Everton, West Ham or Portsmouth.

A moody striker will not get a transfer away from the club for whom he can barely bring himself to turn up to training, leaving the player in footballing purgatory while his club end up looking like a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. One of three promoted clubs will bring in some French full-back you’ve never heard of from Anorak Vladikavkaz or Nausea Bucharest, who will play eight times before leaving on a Bosman in the summer.

An unremarkable South American who has a European passport for some reason will join Liverpool, where he will play for the reserves until he joins Bolton on loan. Chelsea finally complete a protracted transfer of a big name star that has been rumoured since the previous deadline day.

Rangers will sign Kilmarnock’s best forward, to near-universal indifference south of Hadrian’s Wall. Meanwhile, the Kilmarnock forward who joined Rangers two years ago will leave due to a lack of first team opportunities.

Manchester Utd will send four local eighteen-year-olds with only one hairstyle between them on loan to their feeder club, Royal Antwerp and that will be the last we ever hear about them.

An Italian striker will leave Manchester City after twelve months indifferent form, muttering aggrieved sentiments about English players drinking habits and the Manchester weather. In the Championship, somebody who you thought plays for Charlton but actually plays for Sheffield Wednesday will join Derby.

Somebody will text the BBC website saying that Klaas Jan Huntelaar has been in the back of his taxi in Newcastle, reminding us that we heard it there first. Huntelaar will join Juventus. Liverpool, in urgent need of wingers, will sign a sixth goalkeeper. And Juninho will go back to Middlesbrough on loan for the tenth time.

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(Liverpool have just signed an 18-year-old Hungarian goalkeeper called Péter Gulácsi. Told you.)

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Never mind the managerial merry-go-round, this year we have the accusations-of-tapping-up-a-player-merry-go-round. It works like this. Chelsea, mildly peeved at the way José Mourinho flirted with Frank Lampard during the summer, have raised the ire of Real Madrid, who believe they are trying to unsettle Robinho. Real Madrid themselves made no secret earlier this summer of how much they wanted Cristiano Ronaldo, regardless of the feelings of Manchester United, who have unsettled Tottenham’s Dimitar Berbatov. And Tottenham, thanks to the ridiculous transfer tribunal, had to pay only £700,000 to Crystal Palace for their wonder-kid John Bostock. So, if Palace want your team’s star striker, start worrying.

All of which goes to show that the main currency of football politics is hypocrisy.

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Ninny of the Year award goes to Paul Scholes, whose absurd handball earned him a second yellow card in the UEFA Super Cup, European football’s annual jolly in Monaco’s abysmal Stade Louis II, which is a loss to the world of multi-storey car-parks.

If Maradona’s goal in the 1986 World Cup quarter final was the Hand of God, then Scholes’s hilarious piece of volleyball in the dying minutes of the Super Cup was the Hand of Vishnu; it could scarcely have been more conspicuous. His reward is a suspension for Manchester Utd’s first Champions League match against Villarreal on 17th September, news of which, when broken in a post-match interview, must have given Sir Alex Ferguson a face like thunder, though the claims by the masticating knight that Scholes was just being ‘instinctive’ (as opposed to cheating) offend common sense.

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It was Peter Crouch, not Jermain Defoe, who scored Portsmouth’s final goal in their 3-0 win at Everton on Saturday. Match of the Day got it right, the Times got it wrong. It is of no consequence whether Defoe’s shot bounced behind the goal-line; the officials didn’t signal a goal until Crouch headed the rebound in, so it has to be his. Which is just as well, as the Dubious Goals Committee have enough to do this week, sorting out West Ham’s second goal against Blackburn, which took the most subtle deflection of Dean Ashton after cannoning in off defender Christopher Samba. Then there was Wigan’s first goal at Hull, where Kevin Kilbane’s corner went straight in via a slight knock from defender Sam Ricketts. And you thought a seat on these panels was a cushy job?

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The opening day of the Italian and Spanish seasons brought chaos, as most of the big teams dropped points. In Serie A Milan, complete with new signings Ronaldinho and Andriy Shevchenko, collapsed 2-1 at home to newly promoted Bologna, Roma were held 1-1 at the Olimpico by Napoli and champions Inter, in their first league match under new coach José Mourinho, could only draw 1-1 with Sampdoria in Genoa.

In La Liga, meanwhile, Barcelona lost 1-0 at newly promoted Numancia while Real Madrid, who will doubtlessly use the excuse of Robinho’s transfer saga ‘unsettling’ the side, lost 2-1 at Deportivo La Coruña. Only Valencia and Atlético Madrid, whose summer spending spree surely means they should be counted among the title-chasers, registered wins, 3-0 against Real Mallorca and 4-0 against Málaga respectively.

Still, things are going to plan in France, where Lyon – seven consecutive titles and counting – share top spot with Marseille and are yet to concede a goal in four matches.