4 days left to go in August and hopefully we can keep you updated through all the madness.
Chelsea offer 50m for Barcelona’s Ronaldinho
Sounds ridiculous to me for a host of reasons. The Spanish press are really loosening up for one last salvo of randomly generated crap, aren’t they?
Read more: Ronaldinho, Chelsea and Barcelona.
Liverpool offer 13.5m for Real Madrid’s Baptista
Same as above.
Read more: What will Liverpool do with the Beast?.
Deco to leave, Milan, Manchester City and Newcastle watching and waiting
So the Deco rumours still continue – and I still don’t see him playing at Tyneside or at the City of Manchester stadium. Why would he swap CL football for FA and League Cup football when he’s got a nice contract at Barcelona and he could wait till he goes to a club playing Champions League football?
And that’s before considering whether he’s actually surplus or wants to leave or not. I doubt it, and I think he might just head to Italy or stay in Spain in the future.
Read more: Barcelona’s Deco watched by Manchester City and Newcastle United.
Why are Newcastle tracking Postiga?
With both Martins and Owen re-establishing their commitment to the Newcastle cause, it’s a bit surprising that Sam Allardyce would go after Helder Postiga in a bid to ‘replace’ Luque. Is that ‘replace’ in a ‘replace a dud’ or ‘make up the manpower’? Either case, not needed by Newcastle at the moment, so this one’s a bit strange.
Could Arsenal lose Lehmann?
It’s his last season with the Gunners at any rate, and while I don’t think that he’ll be shipped out before 1st September (not after Arsene Wenger proclaimed him to be one of the Arsenal captains off the pitch), he could leave in January instead of next summer. It’s a bit overblown though – Lehmann is still a reliable keeper, he’s just not as good as people expect an Arsenal keeper to be.
Boro will get Alves, who’s going after Huntelaar?
Although Heerenveen are holding out for more money, the Afonso Alves to Middlesbrough deal is basically done and is most likely to be pushed through before the end of the transfer season (unless Gibson decides to quibble about the extra couple of million). That leaves Huntelaar as the popular continental striker who everyone names on their ‘sign a striker’ wishlist but he rarely comes into contention when the big clubs go shopping.
Will Arsenal sign Huntelaar? Will Manchester United? The Huntelaar link is one rumour that wasn’t properly exploited by the press, methinks, and they pretty much exploited everything they could think of.
What’s up with Chelsea and Shevchenko?
Dinamo Kiev want him on a season’s loan but player ego is unlikely to make that a reality. However, the fact that the striker who was supposedly the best in the world two seasons ago now only has the Russian league bidding for him is a bit disturbing; I know that Sheva wants to prove himself at Chelsea and in England but to make that happen he needs far more chances than he’s getting right now, and if he can play for Ukraine in midweek then he can surely make the bench for Chelsea’s weekend games.
Except that he doesn’t, so now the question is, what happens with Sheva, and is he going to be 4th choice?
Manchester City should sign Adriano, immediately
That about sums it up, doesn’t it? 10m or not, Adriano has the physical presence, technical skills and the pace to be successful in England. Whether he has the aptitude or not is a different story, but to be fair, he will be a risk and Eriksson would do well to get him in on loan instead.
The good thing about buying him would be that he could be sold off for roughly the same price, even a bit more, to a Spanish club next summer. Adriano’s still relatively young and because of his resale value, I don’t see why he can’t be picked up.
Everton and Middlesbrough after Bolton’s Nolan
Why would Bolton’s captain jump ship? If either team wants a good player, they should go for Gary Speed 🙂 I’m surprised why Big Sam didn’t bring Speed along – they could have shipped Butt off to Sunderland and made everyone happy.
Middlesbrough chairman critical of Viduka and Yakubu
A case of sour grapes? Gibson calls his outgoing (or gone) strikers a pair of greedy motherfuckers. Or something similar. Actually he reserves the greedy tag for Viduka, preferring to criticise Yakubu for not showing up in the second half of last season.
Read more: Middlesbrough chairman wrong to air dirty laundry with Viduka and Yakubu.
Newcastle United to sign Faye?
The grapevine says that Newcastle are ‘very close’ to signing Faye from Bolton.
Read more: Faye on his way and Newcastle in for a new right-back.
That’s about it for today’s transfer news wrap-up. Make sure to hit the Summer 2007 Premier League transfers page for the latest updates on Prem transfers, and our transfer news section for more transfer discussions.
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