Three and in – not just another football blog

As the news of Bébé slipping back out of the Old Trafford door with as little fuss as when he quietly slipped in, it begs the question; How has his transfer to Manchester United been so easily forgotten about? This was a player who was homeless a year or so before the signing, which is novel enough as a multi-million pound industry story. But on top of that, and here we may find the root of the answer we seek, his transfer to Manchester United had a distinctly ‘dodgy’ aroma to it.

The player was signed by Guimaraes for just half a packet of Rolos, then five weeks later, after a couple of pre-season games, they sold him to Manchester United for over £7m! Without Ferguson having ever seen him play! During the midst of a difficult financial period for Manchester United in which £7m wasn’t far off being their record transfer fee!

But why didn’t Manchester United, with their Portuguese scouting system and former assistant manager in charge of the Portuguese national team, just sign him for free a month earlier? Did he really make his mark during those pre-season friendlies?

But what’s this? Just before he completed this big-money transfer, he was suddenly poached from his existing agent by Portuguese ‘super agent’ Jorge Mendes, also responsible for the sales of Anderson, Ronaldo and Nani to Manchester United? A man who knows Alex Ferguson well? And he owned £30% of Bébé’s ‘economic rights’, so made about £3m out of the transfer for himself?

That sounds a bit suspicious. Has he ever been involved in Alex Ferguson paying over-the-odds for a Portuguese player before now then? What’s that? He handled negotiations directly with Alex Ferguson and Peter Kenyon for the sale of Ronaldo to Manchester United for £12.24m when Sporting had already accepted a bid from Arsenal for just £5.5m? An extra near-£7m? It sounds almost as if someone or other may have made the transfer happen purely for potential underhand personal financial gain.

As does this Bébé one.

Just like another Ferguson family member was once accused of doing on a BBC documentary. Which led to Ferguson blackmailing the BBC. Which he’s still doing. And coincidentally, no press agency is asking any questions about the potential for dodgy dealings behind this recent transfer.

Interesting…

Word filtering through the t’Interwebsphere is that Tottenham’s Niko Kranjcar’s notoriously chatty father, Zlatko Kranjcar has been engineering a swap deal with AS Roma’s Mirko Vucinic.

At least that is what ol’Zlato told Walter Sabatini…

Spurs manager Harry Redknapp has quite openly operated a culture of favourites at White Hart Lane, ever since his arrival. He’s a died in the wool East End boy who sticks with what he knows, sticks with who he knows. I don’t think Harry has ever felt he either knows or wants to know Niko. And I think that’s probably Tottenham’s loss.

But Mirko Vucinic is a €25M rated striker and even the most ardent Niko fan will acknowledge this sounds pretty good! But will it happen? Can Spurs be the first club in the history of football to make one of these insane media deals actually come true? Good question. In this instance, let’s hope so.

I don’t think I’ve ever felt sorry for Alan Pardew before.  But seeing him lose his star striker and best player with just hours of the transfer window to go, there was a tinge of sympathy.  Accompanied, admittedly, by a smirk.  Pardew did a deal with the devil when he agreed to work for Mike Ashley, and these sorts of bumps are inevitable on such a rocky road.

I’m sure, come the summer, he’ll enjoy spending the preposterous £35m fee Newcastle managed to get for Andy Carroll.  For now, however, he’s stuck with a paucity of striking options: the erratic (and now injured) Shola Ameobi; the fast but feeble Peter Lovenkrands; a man who took almost a year to score for the club, Leon Best; and the promising but unpolished Nile Ranger.

Desperate times call for desperate measures.  And that, undoubtedly, is what signing Jeremie Aliadiere would be.

When Aliadiere came through the renowned Clairefontaine academy, he received favourable comparisons with Thierry Henry and David Trezeguet.  As we speak, he’s been without a club for more than six months.  When Arsenal sold him to Middlesbrough in 2007, Aliadiere complained that Arsene Wenger had ‘frozen him out’.  Not so.  Wenger’s faith in him was unwavering: he received countless opportunities, including starting the 2007 Carling Cup Final against Chelsea.

The reasons Aliadiere failed to make the grade at Arsenal are the same reasons he finds himself a free agent now: inconsistency, and injuries.

When he signed for Boro, Aliadiere said:

“My career is beginning.  Now everything depends on me; the cards are in my hands.”

Well, it’s safe to say that since then he’s dropped the cards in a big puddle of poo, and is currently scrabbling about trying to find them.

When fit at Middlesbrough, Aliadiere failed to deliver, scoring just 11 goals in nearly 80 appearances.  The bigger problem was that he simply wasn’t fit often enough.  Aliadiere is one of that unfortunate breed of footballers from whom injury is something they have to learn to expect, not avoid.  His bones are as brittle as his confidence in front of goal.

To think he’s now on the verge of a Premier League return is remarkable.  He trained with West Ham this summer until that trial was interrupted by, you guessed it, injury.  Now, with the window closed and only free transfers permitted, the Toon could soon welcome a man who flopped so badly at Boro.

If he does sign, I wish Aliadiere all the best.  There’s no doubting that he did once have a good deal of potential, but at 27 it seems a little late to be “beginning” his career all over again.

Apparently, Newcastle’s alternative to Aliadiere is Francis Jeffers. I haven’t seen the rest of that list, but judging by their apparent taste for injury prone ex-Arsenal players, I should probably let Newcastle know that Christopher Wreh is currently out of contract with Indonesian Football League side Perseman Manokwari…

How different things are at Chelsea these days.  The time has been that all they had to do was click their fingers and Europe’s top talent would come running.  The lure, at first, was money.  Later, the opportunity to win trophies and work with luminary talent like Jose Mourinho swung the balance.  But money, lots of money, was always at the heart of it.

With the Financial Fair Play rules on the horizon, Chelsea have tightened the purse-strings somewhat in recent years.  However, this January, with the team struggling to keep pace with Manchester United and their Champions League place under threat, Roman Abramovich is seeking to invest once more.

Problem is, they can’t.

First Steven Pienaar opted to join Tottenham instead.  Then, within the last 24 hours, a bid for Fernando Torres was rejected and the mooted deal for Benfica centre-half David Luiz collapsed over the proposed payment structure.  There’ve also been less convincing reports of a double bid for Sergio Aguero and Diego Godin, similarly turned down.

Chelsea, it seems, are paying the price for their previously luxuriant spending. When the Blues come a-calling, clubs hold them to ransom.  Abramovich might be intent on downgrading his outlay, but it doesn’t mean he’s run out of funds – and clubs know that.  He set an expensive precedent, and now Chelsea have to foot the bill.

Superseded by Manchester City in both the wealth stakes and the league standings, it’s an awkward period for Chelsea and Abramovich.  The few days between now and the end of the transfer window might tell us just how much his pride has been hurt – and, crucially, how far he’s willing to go to do something about it.

They love a goalscorer in the North East, so it was no surprise when the Sunderland fans quickly took southerner Darren Bent to their hearts.  Bent has 81 league goals in the last five seasons – a record bettered only by Didier Drogba and Wayne Rooney. With the Mackems, he found his richest vein of form, first in a powerful partnership with Kenwyne Jones, and latterly alongside Asamoah Gyan and Danny Welbeck.

After Bent completed his surprise move to Aston Villa yesterday, dropping from sixth in the table to seventeenth in the process, Sunderland fans were understandably disappointed.

Until, presumably, they saw the fee.  £24m for a player of Bent’s limitations is a quite extraordinary sum.  Yes, he’s a goalscorer, but most Sunderland fans would admit that both Welbeck and Gyan have been in better form this season.  Selling Bent solves the ‘three into two’ conundrum that has been facing Steve Bruce all season.

Niall Quinn is no fool, and the chairman will remember well that Sunderland once rejected a £15m bid for Kevin Phillips, only to sell him for a fifth of that price two years on.  Bent’s value will never be higher, and Quinn has now turned a hefty profit on a player whose value will never be higher.  With the proceeds, expect him to try and do a permanent deal for Welbeck, as well as looking for a striker who gives the squad greater variation.

At Aston Villa’s press conference this afternoon, Gerrard Houllier called Bent’s signing “a major milestone”.  He’ll have to score an awful lot of goals to prevent the fee from becoming a major millstone.

One of the stars of this summer’s World Cup, Siphiwe Tshabalala, could be set for a move to English football with the news he’s due to arrive for a trial period at Nottingham Forest.  His agent says:

“There were a couple of Premier League teams who showed an interest but they took too long to get back to me,” he said.

We had to go for the first assessment that we were offered because there is only a limited amount of time for the deal to be done but at least he will be there in the eyes of the UK football scene.

He’s very excited – like all players, he wants to play at the highest level and Siphiwe showed at the World Cup he is capable of that.”

You’ll remember Tshabalala for his stunning goal which opened the World Cup in earnest.  Now, Tshabalala’s arrival would hold particular excitement for me.  Having spent some time out in South Africa last summer (which you can read more about here), a mate and I were lucky enough to bump in to the pocket-sized winger.

I should point out at this juncture that I have doctored this photo to protect this man from the shame of being identified as my friend.  He does not suffer from a hideous facial deformity.  Or, if he does, it’s not the one that the photoshopped image would have you believe.

Anyway, we met in glamorous circumstances: a service station.  Tshabalala was on the road to the semi-final in Durban, and had presumably stopped off for the motorway essentials of petrol and fried chicken.  When we bumped in to him, he had just made a little boy cry by giving him his shorts.  It’s less weird than it sounds.

He seemed to be a pleasant enough guy.  But a word of warning to excited Forest fans: when I asked around about the chances of Tshabalala moving to Europe, many were doubtful about his willingness to ditch the party boy lifestyle he was famous for in Johannesburg.  He has quite the reputation for enjoying the city’s varied nightlife.

Still, if it did happen, it’d certainly be interesting.  From Bafana Bafana to Burnley and Barnsley, and all in a matter of months.

Happy New Year to you all, and welcome to another Transfer Window – sponsored by Manchester City.

The window hasn’t yet been open for a single UK working day, and they’re already on the verge of buying their supporters a belated multi-million pound Christmas present: Wolfsburg’s Bosnian striker Edin Dzeko. According to multifarious sources on the heir-apparent to the Sky Sports News’ ticker, the Twitter timeline, a £27m fee has been agreed and the player is due to arrive for a medical on Tuesday.

Dzeko is undoubtedly a talented footballer, and one seemingly well-suited to the Premier League. Tall, powerful, and skillful, he’s a modern target man.

The question is: where does he fit in?

All season long City have played a 4-3-3, spear-headed by Carlos Tevez. In the lone striker role, Tevez has been exemplary, netting 35 goals in just 52 games. Moving him in to a wide position would be a madness, whilst changing to a 4-4-2 halfway through the campaign would be a radical move and one out of character with Roberto Mancini’s inherent caution. One wonders: is Mancini going to change the shape of the side to accommodate the new boy? Or is the £27m Dzeko simply going to replace the £25m Adebayor as an outrageously expensive substitute?

Making the wrong signing halfway through a season can be incredibly costly – just ask the Newcastle fans who saw the undoubtedly gifted Tino Asprilla disrupt their rhythm and cost them a title.

Perhaps Dzeko will become City’s starting striker, and Carlos Tevez will move on after all – after this weekend’s display, he’s got an intriguing new suitor.

What do you reckon City fans: rotation or reinvention?

Perhaps the ‘leaf/book’ one is an odd analogy to headline with.  Despite Harpersport’s publication of ‘Wayne Rooney: My Story So Far’, neither Rooney or Tevez strike me as particularly literary figures.  However, they are united by the one book they both understand perfectly well: the cheque-book.

Tevez and Rooney are from opposite sides of the globe, yet their lives and careers have shared several parallels.  Both emerged from urban poverty to make themselves global football superstars with a distinctive, all-action style.  They even went on to become twin strike partners at Manchester United – all too often split up because their games were ‘too similar’.  And latterly, since Tevez’s switch across the city, they have become emblematic of the blue and red divide that splits Manchester.

It’s probably fair to say Tevez’s move to City was motivated, in large part, by money.  Whilst his wages are already exorbitant, he and his agent Kia Joorabchian will have glanced with interest at Wayne Rooney’s flagrant, and successful, wage-raising tactics at United.

Rooney’s demands were eventually met, and a resolution reached.  It’s not hard to imagine that Tevez looked at his importance to City, and wondered if a similar proportional increase might be possible.  Statements talked of missing his family and ‘irreparably broken’ relations with un-named board members.   The reality seems to have been rather different: one meeting today was able to resolve all Tevez’s concerns, and just as with Rooney, his transfer request was withdrawn with immediate effect.

City say no pay rise will be forthcoming, but one wonders if that policy will hold come the summer.  Just a few weeks ago, club and player were renegotiating image rights.  Who would be surprised if a settlement favourable to Tevez and Joorabchian was soon reached?  The Argentine has followed Rooney’s rebellious lead, and strengthened both his hand and his position.  If results like last night’s home defeat to Everton continue, manager Roberto Mancini could find himself the first of the quarrelsome pair out of the door.

The Premier League is about to get some swagger back. Yesterday, Aston Villa assistant manager Gary McAllister confirmed that Gerard Houllier is in talks with Robert Pires about a return to English football.

“Robert has been training at Arsenal.

I know the boss and Arsene Wenger are very friendly and I believe he’s spoken to him.

It would be perfect. I am sure he would arrive at the training ground in good condition.

He’s a player everyone would look up to because of what he has achieved.”

There aren’t many 37-year olds strutting their stuff in the Premier League, but Pires has the ability to counteract his increasing physiological limitations. His performances in his first spell in the Premier League were quite incredible, and class like that never fades altogether.

A succession of knee problems forced Pires to adapt his game in the more temperate climes of La Liga. He went from a lightening fast winger and goalscorer to creator and keep-ball merchant.

That, judging from Saturday’s match with Man U, is exactly what Villa need. They have plenty of exciting young talent: Barry Bannan, Marc Albrighton and Jonathan Hogg all began the game. But it’s that inexperience which cost them three points. Albrighton repeteadly sought to drive to the byline and cross, when turning back inside and finding a team-mate may have been the more sensible choice. Pires has the experience, cool-head, and passing ability to make that difference.

Just think, too, what Villa’s more senior players could learn from a true Premier League great. Robin van Persie has spoken effusively many times of how watching Pires train improved his game. Imagine what the same could do for Ashley Young: like Pires, a right-footed left-winger or support striker.

And finally, the clincher: it was at Villa Park that Pires helped Andy Gray coin his now trademark ‘Tek a boo, son’, with this, arguably his finest moment in an Arsenal shirt:

Tek a boo, indeed. The Premier League will get to say goodbye to one of its great entertainers – and an Invincible Champion, no less.
If a deal can be done in the next next week or so, Pires could be in line to be a part of the Villa squad on Saturday 27th. Their opponents at Villa Park that day? Arsenal. You couldn’t make it up.

Best Signing
It’s rare that ‘best’ also equates with ‘biggest’, but Sunderland’s acquisition of Asamoah Gyan does look very promising indeed.  The Ghanaian forward was one of the most impressive players at the World Cup, and his all-action style ought to be well suited to the Premier League.

Most Surprising Move
Incredibly, Jermaine Pennant managed to fly below the radar before joining Stoke on loan from Real Zaragoza.  His tag must be broken.

Most Predictable Move
Marcus Bent going somewhere, anywhere on loan.  Having signed for Wolves, he becomes the first player to have played for every known football team.

Most Embarrassing Climbdown
There’s a few candidates here.  There’s Shay “I need to be playing” Given, who elected to stay at City and count his cash on the bench.  There’s Arsene Wenger, who must call on the services of Manuel Almunia having spent the summer trying to replace him.  But the winner has to be Aleksandr Hleb, who left Arsenal citing a dislike of London, and has today moved to picturesque Birmingham.

The ‘Andrey Arshavin’ Award For Late Arrivals
We still don’t know if Rafael Van Der Vaart is a Spurs player.  If he is, he must have rolled through the closing window with all the dexterity of a double-jointed Indiana Jones.

The ‘Harry Redknapp’ Wheeler-Dealer Award
Remember, Harry definitively isn’t a wheeler-dealer, so is no longer eligible for the award.  The winner instead must be Stoke’s Tony Pulis, who brought in Eidur Gudjohnsen, Jermaine Pennant, Salif Diao and Marc Wilson, offloading Liam Lawrence and Dave Kitson to Portsmouth in the process.

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Your own awards, gloating and wailing are all, as ever, welcome.