There was a time in the not too distant past when the transfer window would have filled me with hope, expectation and that feeling of nervous excitement that usually means a broken F4 key on your keyboard and far too much time spent on football messageboards waiting for In The Know’s to post their ever so secret scraps from football’s top tables as transfers were secretly wheeled and dealed behind not quite closed doors.

These days it leaves me cold and bored which is probably more a consequence of Spurs traditional lack of imagination in the transfer market (more of a last minute trolley dash to the bargain bins than a carefully planned strategy) but mostly because of the tabloid newspapers.

Pre-internet I lived for The Sun, The Mirror and Daily Star, for the tidbits they fed us about potential signings and the supposed top secret deals they were able to let us know about. These days I don’t waste my time or money on them as it’s become plainly obvious that they’ve developed a Random Transfer Rumour Generator and just let it run over the transfer window with no need for truth or accountability to get in the way of making up rumours to satisfy the lustful demands of mugs like the rest of us who just can’t help dreaming about our clubs landing the big metaphorical fish.

Today both The Mirror and The Sun have sunk to such new lows on the football transfer rumour mill that I can’t help but complain about them. Regular readers will know I have little time for Chelsea’s Fantasy Football team, their manager or their playboy owner but I’ve seen two potential “transfers” today that must chill all Chelsea fans to their bones.

The Mirror - Milan Baros has emerged as Jose Mourinho’s main transfer target.
The Sun - Charlton want ?25m for Darren Bent.

I’m not even going to dignify either of these with a more in depth analysis as it would be a waste of words from me and a waste of your time reading it. Who in their right mind believes that Mourinho sees misfiring, running down a blind alley, goalshy Milan Baros as the answer to Chelsea’s striking problems? If the unthinkable happens and it’s actually true I promise I will eat my hat and all of yours as well. Maybe even Milan Baros’s hat for that matter. As for Bent being worth ?25m, are Charlton serious? One decent season at Premiership level and now he’s crocked and they feel that 25 big ones is a fair price for him. Shall I mention Marcus Stewart, Kevin Phillips, Michael Bridges and Michael Ricketts or will I leave things as they are?

Disgusted with the papers for printing such rubbish, disgusted at myself for reading it (even online) and disgusted that there must be so many people willing to hand over 30p or however much the tabloids cost these days to read them.

I’m off to code a Random Transfer Rumour Generator, there’s obviously plenty of money in it.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 6th, 2007 at 3:23 pm and is filed under Chelsea. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.