Rate it!

27 votes

Rumour mills are funny things. Quite often they grind along pretty slowly, with all manner of giant cogs and wheels rotating gracefully to churn out the silky smooth flours of speculation and revelation.

Sometimes, that mechanism gets clogged up - perhaps by players heading off for international duty, or the post-transfer window lull - and that flow reduces to a trickle, with the interested millers grabbing what tiny crumbs they can.

But other times, it's as if a gang of cider-fuelled teenagers have broken into the mill by night, replaced its diesel with nitro-glycerine, and turned all the dials up to 11. Rather than producing a steady stream, suddenly the rumour mill starts spitting out enormous, semi-digestible lumps of insider info, half-truth and outrageous fabrication that - for GS, at least - make for great entertainment. And that's where things stand today.

Naturally enough, nothing throws the mill into turbo mode quicker than an enormous injection of hard cash, which is why GS kicks off with the latest Manchester City gossip.

Sheikh Mansour's umpteen bajillions must make Mark Hughes feel like a nine-year-old left to roam Hamleys with a stolen credit card, but even still he's surpassed himself with a post-Christmas wishlist of fantastically ridiculous proportions.

With a team that's shipping goals like the Titanic shipped icy seawater, it's no surprise that Hughes is trying to buy in the sort of defence that would make opposing attackers fall to the floor and beat the turf in frustration. The most eye-catching name on the list is the stupendously unlikely one of John Terry, who seems about as likely to join City as Alex Ferguson. But if Hughes gets his way in bringing the likes of Kolo Toure, Kaka, Fernando Torres, Roque Santa Cruz, Ricardo Oliviera and Ashley Cole to the sky blue side of Manchester, then could the Chelsea captain be up for a new challenge?

Probably not, but with Chelsea apparently about to fire academy director Frank Arnesen in order to save paying his £2 million wages, the decision might well not be Terry's to make. City's reputed £63m offer for Juventus and Italy keeper Gianluigi Buffon was so outrageous that Buffon himself is said to have recommended that the club accept it, for their own good - and in a credit-crunch world, it might just happen.

That's the thing about City's windfall: it's as if they've won the Euromillions at the exact same moment that everyone else in their street has started worrying about their jobs and missing credit card payments. Even the taxman has bad news for football these days, with income tax for rich people - and this includes every Premiership footballer in the country - set to jump in a couple of years time. You think those poor, struggling players will be happy to take a five percent pay cut? Exactly. Wages will have to rise for English clubs to stay competitive with their foreign counterparts.

Cash flow crisis or not, with Chelsea now looking certain to lose sulkmeister extraordinaire Didier Drogba to Inter, Big Phil Scolari is looking out for possible replacements. The smart money is on Brazilian Adriano to come in the opposite direction, but if the man mountain of a striker doesn't fancy life in London then another Brazilian, CSKA Moscow's Wagner Love, looks like the top target.

Despite the fact that Love, like Drogba, has one of world football's most wonderfully ludicrous names, would he really fill the Didier-shaped gap? Certainly not as well as Fernando Torres, but the Liverpool man has restated his dedication to the club which he claims to see as a "symbol of the city which fought to stay alive", in one of the schmalziest football quotes of the year.

Returning to the money issue, Southampton are apparently struggling to pay the bills and will be looking to offload defensive duo Andrew Surman and Adam Lalla, with both Stoke and Fulham keen to pick up the pair. Stoke are also about to sign Senegalese defender Lamine Diatta, a free agent since being released by Newcastle earlier this year.

Sunderland and Coventry are both looking to offload players from their payroll, with the Black Cats looking to sell Pascal Chimbonda for around £5 million and Coventry wanting rid of Gary Borrowdale. And Middlesborough have cut their wage bill by sending John Johnson off to Tranmere on loan. Will Liverpool take the same route with Dutchman Ryan Babel? In the last few months he's been an expensive benchwarmer at £11.5m, and though he's making all the right noises about keeping his patience, a healthy bid in January might be welcomed.

Anglo-Iberian trade seems likely to grow in the next few months, with Arsenal after Sevilla's Federico Fazio, Everton after Portuguese defender Vasco Fernandes of Leixoes and Valencia keen on Cesar Sanchez, the Spurs reserve keeper.

Elsewhere, there's plenty of focus on who will take over from Colin Calderwood at the Championship's current basement club, Nottingham Forest. Aidy Boothroyd, Iain Dowie and Lawrie Sanchez have all been mentioned, names to bring chills down the spine of many a fan and serve as reminders of the odd fact that strings of high-profile failures rarely seem to bar managers from finding new work. But the big news is that Sam Allardyce is apparently interested in getting back to work following his enforced 11-month holiday. With reputed interest in the club from the Middle East, could Forest finally be on their way back to the top of the English game?

Toby Keel / Eurosport