Tales from the Tabs – Sunday 28th July

Dull, boring, clueless, defying all logic and an utter waste of time. Ladies and gentlemen, not a description of 90 minutes spent watching St.Mirren but how this transfer window has panned out so far. Very few salacious stories involving English clubs, who instead have looked on wistfully whilst the swarthy millionaires of France, Spain and Germany have had their way with the available talent. But all that looks set to change and the transfer world is expected to revolve around four names. Names who you just may have heard of before, and who you should expect to hear a lot more about over the next four weeks – Messrs Cesc Fabregas, Gareth Bale, Luis Suarez and Wayne Rooney…

Talk of the town – Gareth Bale

The Sun

There is no better way to kick off a transfer story than including a couple of big names as part of an exchange. Ignoring the fact that these very rarely happen (the exceptions of course being Zlatan/Eto’o and Berbatov and erm, Fraizer Campbell), The Sun reels us in with a cracker. Real Madrid are offering Angel di Maria, Fabio Coentrao and £51m for Scotland’s favourite winger, Gareth Bale. Yeah.

Following on from that, news reaches us that the infamous ‘war chest’ is about to be unleashed by Jose Mourinho, containing £30m to grab everyone’s favourite slim and trim Scouser, Wayne Rooney. The article features a spell binding piece of logic from Rob Beasley, that frankly needs repeating in full. To quote:

“But he (Mourinho) maintains the 27-year-old is his ONLY target this summer. So when he talks transfers he must be talking about Rooney”.

It’s the type of insightful, investigative journalism that Roger Cook could only ever have dreamt of. No news of Suarez and Fabregas unfortunately, but I’m sure there will be news elsewhere regarding these two…

The People

…and here is that news. Fabregas, we are told, is set to stay at Barcelona as he has been promised that he is key to their plans. Come on Cesc, surely the prospect of threading through balls to Ashley Young and Antonio Valencia can tempt you away? Meanwhile, Suarez is reported to be deciding against moving to Arsenal as he doubts their Champions League prospects…still better than Liverpool’s though, aren’t they Luis? Spurs are asking for a cool £100m for Gareth Bale and the paper repeat the claims from Mourinho about only paying up to £30m for Rooney.

Now that we’ve got ‘The Big Four’ out of the way, we can look at some other stories. Bayern Munich seemingly have a surplus of midfielders and Chelsea want to help them out by taking Luiz Gustavo off their hands for £15m. Joe Kinnear seems intent on playing up to his stereotype by lining up Phil Bardsley as his first signing.

Shockingly, Roberto Martinez is looking at a player who didn’t play for him at Wigan, Gary Medel of Sevilla. Robert Snodgrass to West Ham and Kyle Naughton to Southampton wrap up this week’s offering from the paper.

The Sunday Mirror

Starting with one of ‘The Big Four’, and some would say the biggest (because he’s fat) and that is Wayne Rooney. The paper reports that United will sell Rooney, just not to an English team. The technical snag here of course, is that the few teams who could afford the transfer fee have either already bought better strikers this summer or have better strikers already.

Will he stay within England? – Wayne Rooney

The paper does nothing further to challenge this scenario, merely pointing out that possible suitor, Real Madrid, prefer Gareth Bale. And prefer him they do, to the sum of £85m, which will be enough to take Mr Bale to Spain, or so we are told. For just half of that, Real could bid for Luis Suarez, as supposedly Arsenal are making a fresh bid of £42.5m this week – the saga continues.

Bafetimbi Gomis and Loic Remy again find themselves linked with Newcastle, which goes to prove that if you are struggling to fill space in the edition, just copy and paste a story from last week and hope that no-one will notice.

The Daily Star on Sunday

Going the other way from everyone else, the paper claim that Bale won’t be sold as it will destroy AVB’s master plan [insert cheap joke here]. It is an interesting stance from the paper, breaking away from the hyperbole of the other tabloids. I would say that either they’ve had the nod from the Spurs hierarchy to appeal to Bale and persuade him to stay, or they’re blindly guessing. I’d take my chances on the second option.

Assuming that Fabregas stays at Barcelona, we need another midfield target to keep readers interested into August. Luka Modric fits the bill perfectly, and has already been mentioned by the paper this summer. Still, he’s a glamorous signing that won’t happen, so fits the criteria.

Gervinho looks set to rejoin his old boss Rudi Garcia at AS Roma, but team mate Santi Cazorla has refuted claims that he could be off to Atletico Madrid for £15m. Returning to the Premier League could be Salomon Kalou, news which is sure to get pulses racing and satellite subscriptions bought across the country. West Ham and West Brom are jostling to be the lucky recipients of the great man’s ‘talent’.

Finally, Sunderland are trying to land young Internazionale star Alfred Duncan for £7m. This begs the question as to who was the last ‘Alfred’ to play in the English top flight? Answers on a postcard please to Born Offside Towers, winner gets a trip to Love Street!