Rob Bagchi: Football’s rumour mill is hard to snub
The surge in transfer gossip and dressing-room rumours has provided us with some magnificent euphemisms
The past 25 years has been a bull market for the proliferation of football transfer gossip. It used to be the preserve of a couple of half pages once a week in the Sunday People and News of the World, and was couched in the sort of conspiratorial language that conjured up an image of the reporter as a rotter in the Spitting Image puppet mode of porcine features, repulsively stained mac and jauntily cocked pork-pie hat imparting confidences that had been furtively rooted out while foot-slogging around the club car parks of England.
Although they were often wildly inaccurate, it never seemed to matter. The joy of reading tittle tattle, or “twittle twattle” as John Prescott colourfully called it on Newsnight the other evening, was that it enabled you to feel party to privileged information, making you feel more of an insider during a time when the game jealously guarded its secrets.
It had its own lexicon and minted the terms that have barely changed in more than two decades. Managers were never interested, they were “poised to swoop”. Bids could not be turned down but had to be “snubbed”, all players over 23 were stars while those under that age were “starlets” and clubs were unlikely to be facing difficulties persuading a player to sign a new contract when “being held to ransom” fitted the bill far more vividly.
Before such stories became common currency, you had to rely on the old formal system for speculation – of players being transfer listed and, in that obsolete phrase, “having their names circulated to the other 91 clubs”. In the pre-fax era that must have constituted half a day’s stamp-licking duties for the club secretary whenever a manager decided to stick someone up for sale.
Local newspapers often did the dirty work for clubs back then, identifying themselves with a team’s manager and board so strongly that they operated as a propaganda machine. Hints were dropped about who was holding out for unreasonable terms, and forthcoming signings and departures were trailed using terminology that would necessitate a wink if it was delivered verbally.
But if you did not read the local paper, and especially for those transfers that did not happen during the summer when everything had news value because space had to be filled and instead occurred mid-season, sometimes the first inkling you had that your club had signed someone was on a Saturday afternoon when you nudged your neighbour and asked “Who’s that?”
Now, of course, most high-profile transfers are such sagas played out over weeks, if not seasons, that you would have to be media illiterate to avoid the knowledge. Gossip is all over the newspapers, on the Sky Sports News ticker, and there are numerous websites for the connoisseur that rely on citizen deep throats posting all manner of hypotheses on the rumour grapevine.
I particularly enjoy the badges of authenticity some of these posters claim for themselves. Convoluted justification is made by prefacing the titbit with something such as “my mum’s friend who works at Goodison once a season shampooing the carpets in the executive boxes got talking to a bloke who once delivered Mikel Arteta’s dry cleaning and his gardener said …” And just in case you doubt the veracity of the whisper, they put “FACT!” after the scoop to emphasise your folly.
As supporters we’re all involved in a game of manipulation with players, agents, managers and clubs pulling our strings. Buying clubs want the price driven down and sellers are keen to ramp it up. Some managers need to be perceived to be in the market at all times because they want to show their muscle and fear not being the story. A couple of injuries and they are “down to the bare bones” and are constantly on the lookout for “two or three real quality players who can make a difference”.
When directed by agents, some magnificent euphemisms have been coined: “He wonders whether the club matches his ambition”; “desperate for a fresh challenge”; “failed to settle in the area” and, my favourite, “playing there is like living in a goldfish bowl”. Being “unsettled”, the catch-all description, essentially means a player wants to move to a better team and for more money but is unwilling to risk unpopularity or forego a loyalty bonus by candidly stating his ambition.
The rumour mill thrives on being fed these stories and because most fans would rather read something spurious about their clubs than nothing at all they have become the lifeblood of the football media business. Beguiled addicts such as me know that we are being played for suckers and will scoff at most of the hogwash directed at us, but we still demand our daily fix.
Man City still chasing Real’s Gago
• Mancini comfirms likelihood of renewed bid
• Johnson sets sights on European place
Manchester City are likely to make a fresh move for Fernando Gago in the summer, the manager, Roberto Mancini, has confirmed. The club insisted it would have signed the 23-year-old defensive midfielder had Real Madrid not waited until the afternoon of transfer deadline day to lower their €25m (£22m) asking price.
“Gago is a good player for Real Madrid, a fantastic player and we may move for him again in the summer,” Mancini said yesterday. “There is a possibility to take him then.” Mancini said that because City felt Gago was overpriced, they tried to take the Kenyan midfielder McDonald Mariga from Parma; a move which collapsed due to work permit issues on Monday.
“We wanted Mariga and for me the situation is incredible because he has played in Europe for seven years,” said Mancini. “I don’t understand the decision, I don’t know why the application was refused but he has gone to Internazionale now so there is no possibility of a deal.”
City made just one permanent transfer in the January transfer window, the England Under-21 midfielder Adam Johnson, signed from Middlesbrough on a four-and-a-half-year contract. Mancini said that his display for Boro against City in the FA Cup last month convinced him to make a £7m offer. It was one Johnson, a graduate of the Middlesbrough academy that produced Stewart Downing, was unable to refuse.
“To be picked to come here and be told you can make an impact is a wonderful thing,” Johnson said. “It is nice to see young British talent coming through and there should be much more of that.
“With the players that Manchester City have available, you have to talk about the Big Five now. If you look around the dressing room, it is as good as any in the Premier League. I had a taste of Europe with Middlesbrough as a young lad and that is something I want again.”
Johnson said he would tone down his habit of playing practical jokes on his team-mates until he had settled in, but he might have reminded Stephen Ireland and Martin Petrov that they were part of a City side that lost 8-1 on Teesside and that he was one of the scorers.
Real Madrid blame City for Gago gaffe
• Spanish giants point finger at chief executive Garry Cook
• ‘They had nothing prepared, not one document signed’
Manchester City have dismissed Real Madrid’s claims that they were to blame for the failed deadline-day attempt to sign Fernando Gago. The 23-year-old Argentina international was one of Roberto Mancini’s primary targets but the £15.7m deal had to be called off after the clubs ran out of time to process the transfer before the 5pm cut-off point.
Madrid have blamed City’s chief executive, Garry Cook, for not being fully prepared and said the delay was caused partly by the need to get a formal go-ahead from the City owner, Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan. “They had nothing prepared, not even one document signed,” Jorge Valdano, Madrid’s sporting director, told the El País newspaper. “They had not reached an agreement with the player and they would have had to have done everything in 40 minutes.”
City are reluctant to be drawn into a verbal battle with the Spanish club, a legacy in part of the war of words with Milan following the infamous attempt to sign Kaká, and have decided not to speak out publicly. Privately, however, Cook and his colleagues are taken aback by Valdano’s remarks and believe the deal could have gone through without any complications had Madrid not initially overpriced the player.
The first contact between the two clubs was made in early January when Madrid quoted a fee of £21m and informed City they would not budge. After being unable to persuade them to lower that valuation, City switched their attention to McDonald Mariga, Palma’s Kenyan midfielder, reaching an agreement over his fee and salary only to learn on Monday that they could not get a work permit for him. Cook then returned to Madrid to check whether Real’s stance had altered and was informed Gago’s valuation had dropped by £4.3m.
With only a few hours to go before the transfer window closed, Cook suggested the only way to complete everything was to sign a loan deal with a clause that a permanent transfer be concluded in the summer, but Madrid were unhappy with that idea and, say City sources, seemed to expect that personal terms would already have been agreed with Gago. Cook informed Madrid that to have done so would have constituted an illegal approach.
Gago spent most of the day waiting for developments in a hotel and his agent, Marcelo Lombilla, was unimpressed by Cook’s handling of the transfer. “City used us,” Lombilla told the radio station Onda Cero. “This has never happened to me before. I don’t want to talk about the figures that City were offering because they approached Madrid without even knowing there wasn’t physically enough time to put something together.”
The failure to land Gago concluded a mixed transfer window for Mancini, who completed a £7m move for Middlesbrough’s Adam Johnson and also brought Patrick Vieira, the former Arsenal captain, back to English football from Internazionale, while Robinho moved to Santos on loan and talks for the Roma defender Marco Motta broke down.
Mariga ended up moving to Internazionale after not getting Home Office clearance despite a personal appeal from the Kenyan prime minister, Raila Odinga, to Gordon Brown and the Football Association’s chairman Lord Triesman. “I spent a minimum of three hours on the phone talking to Gordon Brown’s office, the Africa Office, the Office of Culture and Sports, the Home Office, and to Mariga himself,” Odinga said.
Birmingham admit £40m pot hurt them
• Prices ’shot up’ after owner’s statement
• Club were ‘messed around’ over Pavlyuchenko
Peter Pannu, Birmingham City’s vice-chairman, has admitted that the owner Carson Yeung’s decision to reveal that Alex McLeish would have up to £40m to spend in January was “not particularly helpful” during a frustrating transfer window in which the club failed to land any of their big-name targets.
Birmingham submitted bids for Kevin Kuranyi, Ryan Babel, Kenwyne Jones and Roman Pavlyuchenko but were ultimately forced to concede defeat in their attempts to sign a stellar striker. Pannu believes that Birmingham were “messed around” by other clubs, including Tottenham Hotspur, but acknowledged that “prices shot up” in the wake of Yeung’s statement, made when he took over at St Andrew’s in October, about his intended level of investment.
“It was not particularly helpful that our president indicated a desire to buy players in January and spend some money,” said Pannu. “I think that raised expectations among the clubs that we approached. But, having said that, Carson stuck to his word and executed what he promised. The other side just shied away. We would have had Pavlyuchenko if [Spurs] had not backed off from the original agreement.
“With Pavlyuchenko we managed to negotiate down from £13m to £10m but when we put in a written bid we were told after three days of negotiations that he was not available for sale at £15m. If they had told us that at the beginning we would have moved on to some other strikers. When we were trying to sign Kuranyi his wages doubled in the course of the discussions. His salary was supposed to be gross and the agent changed it into net.”
He pointed to the offers tabled as evidence of Yeung’s intent and said there should be no question about the owner’s financial backing. “The money is there,” he said. “We have every support possible from Carson. There is no problem there. The problem we have is the way some of these clubs have behaved. We have been messed around.
“But I don’t want to sound like I’m criticising anybody. I think this is the business. And we know that January is not a very good time to buy.”
After pulling out of a deal to sign Aruna Dindane, Pannu revealed Birmingham were close to taking the Argentina international Mauro Boselli on loan for the remainder of the season only to be told that Boca Juniors and Estudiantes, who jointly own the 24-year-old, would sanction only a permanent deal.
“We wanted to bring Boselli in on loan with an option to purchase but because he was owned by two other clubs they just wanted to outright sell the player. Carson was willing to buy him but Alex, because he didn’t know the striker, felt that if possible it would have been better to bring him over with an option to buy. And I think in that sense Alex was absolutely correct.”
Pannu admitted, however, that lessons have been learned and that Birmingham, who play at home to Wolverhampton Wanderers on Sunday, will adopt a different approach to the transfer market in the summer.
“Carson does not regret saying anything,” he added. “I think what he said was very honest to the question posed. He indicated the sums for January and we have now gone past that, so let’s move on to the summer and on this occasion we’re not going to say anything.”
Robbie Keane’s exit helps Harry Redknapp solve Spurs striker surplus
• New Celtic striker was ‘Mr Angry’ when out of team
• Spurs manager has only two forwards for FA Cup replay
Robbie Keane’s move to Celtic means Harry Redknapp has only two strikers available for tomorrow’s FA Cup fourth-round replay against Leeds United at Elland Road, but the Tottenham manager said that the Republic of Ireland international’s loan deal has saved him from a greater problem in the long run.
Redknapp said it was difficult to tell whether his team’s attacking strength had been improved by the departure of Keane and the arrival of Eidur Gudjohnsen but he felt he had at least one striker too many once it became clear that Roman Pavlyuchenko was staying.
“Pavlyuchenko wouldn’t have gone to Birmingham or Stoke but Robbie was desperate to go and play for Celtic,” he said. “It solved a problem for me as well.”
Keane’s desperation to move to a club he supported as a boy – just 12 months after he returned to Tottenham from another of his childhood teams, Liverpool – stemmed from his falling behind Jermain Defoe, Peter Crouch and Pavlyuchenko in the White Hart Lane pecking order. Defoe and Crouch will start against Leeds because Pavlyuchenko has a groin problem and Gudjohnsen played today in a friendly against Dagenham & Redbridge.
Keane, who has scored only one league goal since getting four in the 5-0 rout of Burnley in September, is expected to return to north London in the summer: “I would be surprised if Celtic have the money to buy him,” said Redknapp, who believes that the former Chelsea and Barcelona forward Gudjohnsen gives him greater options than the disaffected Ireland captain, whom he described as “Mr Angry” when he is not playing.
“It would have been a problem for Robbie, he wouldn’t have been happy not playing. Crouchy and Defoe have done well and I’ve got Eidur Gudjohnsen who can do the same job. He plays the same type of role as Robbie and he can also play in midfield for me.”
Keane’s departure will be felt in the dressing room, according to Redknapp, who has handed the captaincy to Michael Dawson for tomorrow in the absence of Ledley King. The manager had no hesitation in giving the armband to Dawson at a time when Fabio Capello is deciding whether to strip John Terry of the England captaincy following allegations about the Chelsea defender’s private life.
“I don’t want to second-guess what the England manager is going to do, I’m sure he will make his own decision” said Redknapp. “But there have to be standards. Footballers are young men but they are role models and they are setting examples to kids out there – and they have to set the right examples.
Rangers’ Walter Smith admits Celtic will challenge with new signings
• Rangers manager says Robbie Keane deal is ‘bold move’
• Smith contrasts Rangers’ lack of transfers with Celtic activity
Walter Smith has admitted that Rangers’ continued inactivity in the transfer market in comparison to Celtic’s is causing him concern. Whereas Celtic signed eight players in January, the most notable being Robbie Keane from Tottenham Hotspur on loan, Rangers have completed only an ill-fated loan move for Jérôme Rothen in the last 18 months, with the Lloyds Banking Group maintaining intense scrutiny of the Ibrox club’s financial affairs.
Rangers appear no closer to finding a new owner, which has left their manager powerless in the transfer market. “In many ways it is a bold move, Celtic have to be congratulated for doing that,” Smith said of Keane’s loan signing. “It is quite an imaginative signing they have got in Robbie Keane and a good one for them. They are to be congratulated for the action they have taken in bolstering their squad.
“We have known our situation for a long time. It is obviously in stark contrast to Celtic. The only thing that bothers me about that is that I look into the future for Rangers and the way it seems to be. Unless something hastily is done, this will continue to happen on a regular basis. Smith praised his squad, who have a healthy lead in the Scottish Premier League. “This isn’t the first transfer window where this has happened,” Smith said. “We have a situation where nobody could ask any more from the players here, they have been brilliant in their whole attitude towards playing for the club.
“With what has happened at Celtic, the lads here will get a full test between now and the end of the season. It is a challenge that they will look forward to and I do on a personal basis. The other aspect from my point of view is that I look into the future for Rangers Football Club.”
David Weir, the Rangers captain, faced Keane several times during his in England with Everton. Weir has accentuated the positives from the Ireland international’s move north from Tottenham Hotspur.
“It is a high-profile player coming to our league which is good, it brings more attention,” he said. “You want to win the league because you are playing against the best players. We have to look at it as a challenge; Celtic are making a statement and we have to respond to it on the pitch.”
Kenny Miller misses Rangers’ Co-operative Insurance Cup semi-final against St Johnstone tomorrow night due to injury. Smith has also allowed Madjid Bougherra time off following his exertions for Algeria in the Africa Cup of Nations.
Benjani’s paperwork in order and he finally checks in at Sunderland
• Zimbabwean becomes Bruce’s third winter signing
• Two years ago he joined Manchester City after deadline
Sunderland were belatedly able to confirm the loan signing of Benjani Mwaruwari from Manchester City today after the Premier League was given proof of the technical problems which prevented the necessary paperwork arriving before yesterday’s deadline.
In what may be a first, completion of the deal rested on an engineer confirming Sunderland’s claim that the collapse of the entire communication network at the club’s training ground on yesterday afternoon had prevented them getting the required information to the league and Football Association, even though they had everything signed off before the 5pm cut-off point.
Sunderland’s manager, Steve Bruce, had called for “common sense” to prevail after the club were unable to send faxes or emails, and the league obliged, saying after its investigation that “everything was in order and the deal done before the transfer window closed”.
Bruce said: “The paperwork was lodged but we had some huge, huge difficulties and we informed both the Premier League and the FA at the time of those. It was well in front of the deadline when we got the green light to get Benjani in on loan.
“He’s a big, strong, powerful centre-forward and one we’ve been tracking for a long time. I’m delighted we’ve been able to bring him to the club. He’ll bring another dimension to our striking options and will be a great addition to the squad.”
This is the second time that Benjani, who has joined Sunderland on loan until the end of the season, has completed a transfer after the deadline. He also needed special dispensation from the Premier League when he moved to Manchester City from Portsmouth two years ago after he missed two flights to the north-west.
The 31-year-old is Sunderland’s third signing of the winter following the right-back Alan Hutton, on loan from Tottenham Hotspur until the end of the season, and the centre-back Matthew Kilgallon, from Sheffield United.
Sunderland had completed the signing of Hutton in plenty of time yesterday but the transfer of Benjani was more problematic after talks broke down over personal terms at the weekend, only to be revived late on deadline day.
His signing will be a big relief for Bruce. Although Darren Bent has been in excellent form since a £10m move from Tottenham in the summer, with 15 goals this season, the manager is worried about the lack of cover for his top scorer and also wants competition for Kenwyne Jones. The Trinidad & Tobago international’s form has dipped following a month of intense speculation linking him with moves to Liverpool, Stoke City and Birmingham City, and Bruce admits the player has been badly affected.
Benjani’s loan from Manchester City to Sunderland cleared by Premier League
• Premier League ratifies switch a day after transfer deadline
• Paperwork was not filed on time due to technical problems
Benjani Mwaruwari has completed his loan move from Manchester City to Sunderland after the Premier League ratified the transfer.
The deal for the Zimbabwe striker was initially held up after emails and faxes from Sunderland to the Football Association did not go through. The Premier League has investigated the technical problems and is satisfied that the club had tried to register the deal before yesterday’s 5pm deadline.
The signing of the 31-year-old is a relief for Sunderland manager Steve Bruce, whose side have tumbled to 13th in the league after a bright start. “He’s a big, strong, powerful centre-forward and one we’ve been tracking for a long time,” said Bruce. “I’m delighted we’ve been able to bring him to the club, he’ll bring another dimension to our striking options.”
Benjani arrived in English football at Portsmouth in 2006 before being signed by former City manager Sven-Goran Eriksson for around £7.5m in 2008. However, with City’s attack now boasting Carlos Tevez, Emmanuel Adebayor and Roque Santa Cruz, his first-team opportunities have been severely restricted.
Sunderland, without a league win for two months, also sealed a loan deal for Tottenham defender Alan Hutton on deadline day.
Keane’s move is temporary – Redknapp
• Striker Keane left Tottenham due to lack of first-team action
• ‘I can’t see it being permanent’ says Redknapp of Celtic loan
Harry Redknapp has defended his decision to allow Robbie Keane to join Celtic on loan and maintains the Republic of Ireland striker still has a future at Tottenham. Keane joined the Glasgow club just before yesterday’s transfer deadline and looks set to make his debut against Kilmarnock tonight.
Redknapp brought Keane back to White Hart Lane from Liverpool 12 months ago for a fee in the region of £13m but accepts the 29-year-old has fallen behind Jermain Defoe and Peter Crouch in his pecking order.
With the former Chelsea forward Eidur Gudjohnsen arriving on loan and the Russian striker Roman Pavlyuchenko now back in the first-team picture, Redknapp believes the move was best for all concerned.
“It was difficult for him not playing regularly, and he is not happy to have been out of team,” Redknapp said. “Crouch and Defoe are in good form, and it can cause you problems when you have too many good players in one position.
“I could not guarantee Robbie that he would start tomorrow in the Cup at Leeds, or against Villa at the weekend – and he needs to play.
“Robbie is not happy to sit around taking money without playing – yesterday in training he worked hard as always, but there was a bit of a ‘Mr Angry’ to him. He has a great enthusiasm for the game, Celtic is his team and it was a move for him.”
Redknapp, though, maintained: “I cannot see it being permanent. It is only a loan, until the end of the season. I would think that might be as far as it goes.”
Spurs have arranged a friendly against a Dagenham & Redbridge side to give Younes Kaboul, who arrived from Portsmouth during the transfer window, and Gudjohnsen a chance to work on their match fitness.
Crystal Palace set to pay players’ wages after £1m loan from Agilo
• Administrator confirms staff will be paid after Agilo loan
• Victor Moses’s sale buys time to find potential purchaser
Crystal Palace have been loaned £1m by Agilo, the hedge fund that called in administrators to the club a week ago, which should allow the Championship side to pay the players and staff their wages for January later today.
Agilo, which describes itself as “specialising in distressed assets and special situations”, was owed around £4.5m loaned last summer to the Palace chairman, Simon Jordan, and secured against the players’ contracts. Agilo’s concerns over recouping that money prompted it to call in the administrators P&A Partnership last week.
Yet, with the transfer window now closed and any immediate prospect gone of instigating further player sales, it has now sanctioned an additional loan technically to help with running the club’s costs through the administration. “The staff will be paid on Tuesday because I have negotiated a £1m facility with those that appointed us,” said the administrator, Brendan Guilfoyle.
Palace, who had debts of around £32m, generated some funds over the weekend with the sale of Victor Moses to Wigan Athletic for an initial £2.5m, though two more of their players, Neil Danns and Nathaniel Clyne, rejected moves to Southampton and Wolverhampton Wanderers respectively after Guilfoyle agreed fees with those clubs.
That leaves the club’s revenue streams for the months ahead considerably reliant upon a prolonged FA Cup run – Palace play a fourth-round replay against Wolves this evening, with a televised game against Aston Villa awaiting – and television monies, with the Football League’s payment of around £800,000 of broadcast funds, due in April, set to be redirected straight to football creditors who, at present, are owed around £1.5m.
The remainder of that amount should be covered by the money generated by Moses’s sale, with the rest effectively buying the administrator around two months to find a potential purchaser. “I am working flat out to find a buyer and am confident that I will,” Guilfoyle writes in the programme for this evening’s match. “This club, despite its current problems, is an attractive proposition. We have an excellent manager, play in a good stadium; we have a superb and loyal set of fans and a good name. The 10-point deduction won’t help, but I’m confident that Crystal Palace will start next season as a Championship club, playing at Selhurst Park with new owners firmly in control.
“The club has debt that must be paid and paid quickly. As with all businesses in administration we have to find a way of paying those debts; this is usually achieved by the sale of assets. The most attractive saleable assets that this club has are its players. You don’t need me to tell you what a player Victor Moses is; as a result he was the club’s most attractive asset and had to be sold. It is my judgment that we wouldn’t have been able to sell an injured Victor Moses for anywhere near his true value, if at all. That is why I asked the manager not to select Victor Moses for the games against Newcastle and Peterborough. I could not risk him being injured.”