Beef Bagel

It’s a curious start to the week as Punchbag Face leaps out of his Birmingham frying pan and into the licking flames of Wigan Athletic Football Club although his actions become a little easier on the aching brain when you take into consideration the £2m a year that he’s going to be earning. Personally, that’d get me about as far as Stoke-on-Trent. The Bagel would require at least double that kind of cash to reside in such northerly reaches of this isle. Does the sun ever shine up there?

It certainly does in Israel, for England fans anyway. That was a bloody result and a half, the half being Croatia’s own misfortune against troublesome Macedonia who well and truly did them up like a kipper with a solid 2-0 in Skopje. Now some would say that Scotland’s loss adds the cherry to the icing on this international gateaux but my sympathies lie north of the border. They put up the most passionate spirited performances of the competition so far with truly Herculean efforts against the French et al and to lose out at the last must be a kick in teeth, the stomach, each knee and both testicles at once. They’ll be small kilted children crying into their deep-fried shortbread for many weeks to come. On the one hand you have a team playing international football, the likes of which makes you believe in the World Cup again, who we will no see next summer and on the other shambolic, misfitting squad bumbling their way through in some sort of footballing nepotism. Shame.

But while the nation’s eyes turn to Wembley and Wednesday night, The Bagel turns his to matters of the Hart and seeing as there are no games going on, yet, there’s only one possible topic of conversation: transfers and it’s all gone a little bloody weird today. Suddenly, out of air that would normally be thin if it wasn’t full of the slowly-poisonous North London fog, we’ve been connected with three, yes three, members of the scum.

Now before anybody starts getting their branded, club knickers in a twist, I add the pinch of salt that this has all come out of the Daily Mail and that there are no direct statements from anybody about this - not players, agents, clubs nor club managers but if only for our amusement…

The most interesting of the propositions would be the acquisition of central midfielder, Abou Diaby who at 6′3″ and from the Wenger school of athletic football could make for an effective partner for JJ, platonically speaking of course. At 21 years of age the Frenchman, who’s on the fringes of his national side, has shown a lot of promise since recovering from his broken ankle at the beginning of the year and although arsenal by trade, he’s clearly not all bad…

…out before he hits the deck. Beautiful.

The word on the street is that he’s happy at the Emirates - God help the poor deluded kid - but he would move to get regular first team football. Man City are said to be interested as well as ourselves and whoever gets him will have to pay our rivals a cool £7m, five more than when they took him from Auxerre. Can’t say I’m into the idea of chucking a load of profit their way and I doubt they’d be to pleased about selling a player that may improve our side but we’ll see what happens.

The other two in the equation are, Denilson, and left-back, Almand Traore. Enquiries may have been made about these two but I doubt we’re that interested. Neither would be for our first team. We’ve got a top notch left-sider in Gareth BALE! BALE! BALE! and enough players to cover the position, so no thank you Almond Tray and as far as I’m aware Denilson is more of an attacking option and even if they’d sell him, we’d probably hardly play him. These are probably just a puff of smoke from the previous spark of a rumour.

Thankfully we’re looking elsewhere for our central defensive cover and it seems we’re going to attempt the improbable by pinching on form Villain, Martin Laursen, from under the nose of Martin O’Neill. The 30-year-old, ex-Rossoneri Dane will be out of contract come summer time and could be steady head in our nervy back line. Chances are that Villa are just waiting to make sure he’s truly recovered from his epic spells on the treatment table before throwing more money round the U-bend and even if they let him go, it may just be back to Copenhagen that he goes. Frankly I wouldn’t blame him. It’s home to by far and away the most attractive female population on the planet. So much ‘yes’ it’s impossible to say ‘no’. Trust me, if you’re a single man, just book the flights.

The biggest potential move, of course, came out over the weekend in the Spanish press and let’s face it, probably in Los Daily Mailos. Apparently, Juande has been lining up a deal to bring Valencia demi-god, David Villa, to our British shores should we have to sell Dimitar The Great. It’d take around £30m to capture the 25-year-old and some considerable wages for him to play with while he watches the Champions League on TV but with Ramos at the club we seem to have opened up some excellent trade routes with the Iberian Peninsula.

Nick-named El-Guaje, The Kid, David Villa Sanchez has netted an eye-popping 48 goals in 78 appearances for Valencia since 2005 and 13 in 25 starts for his country. Here’s his head…

…discovering that it’s too dry for a knee slide, and here are his goals…

I don’t want to lose Berbatov but if we do, that’s the way I want to do it. He may not be a big man striker at just 5′9″ but he’s a true poacher and those guys are worth their weight in goal.

Reap the bagel, Brady. Reap it.

The Bagel.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 19th, 2007 at 6:12 pm and is filed under Transfer News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.