Early Doors - Your morning briefing blog

Transfer tinderbox

Wed Jul 16 09:01AM

If the 2008 Premier League summer transfer window was a party, it would be decidedly teenage.

While most of the clubs content themselves with coy glances and occasional hand-holding, only Spurs, Arsenal and Chelsea have taken anyone behind the bike sheds for some full on heavy petting, but none of them have come close to going all the way.

Portsmouth and Bolton have managed a couple of clumsy snogs each, posh kids Manchester United are indignantly swatting away the attentions of the tirelessly eager Spanish exchange student and West Brom are getting stick from pretty much everyone in sight for pulling a couple of mingers that no-one else would go anywhere near.

But with the window stretching before us like a row of spotty chess enthusiasts desperate for a dance, Early Doors can exclusively reveal the identity of the cupid we've all been waiting for.

It's Rafael Benitez.

The Liverpool manager clearly wants to sign Aston Villa captain Gareth Barry and can obviously afford him, but is stubbornly refusing to meet Villa's £18 million valuation, much as he stubbornly refuses to see that his goatee makes him look like a steretypically gregarious kebab shop owner.

Reds fans may bleat about the lack of money their club has compared to Chelsea and Manchester United, but they have spent only £30 million less than United over the past five seasons, and a club that splashed in the region of £40 million on Fernando Torres, Ryan Babel, Yossi Benayoun and Lucas Leiva last summer is hardly up against it.

And - as ED is shrewdly about to demonstrate - if the Barry deal goes ahead it could prove the catalyst for a chain reaction of big-money transfers in the Premier League.

With £18 million in the bank from the Barry sale, Villa boss Martin O'Neill will be able to land Blackburn wide boy David Bentley, prompting Chelsea winger Shaun Wright-Phillips to push through a move to Portsmouth so as not to let his England colleague steal a march on him on the international scene.

Chelsea aren't exactly short of a few bob, but the money they'll get from the Wright-Phillips transfer will enable Roman Abramovich to take Robinho off Real Madrid's hands and give new coach Big Phil Scolari yet another temperamental attacking midfielder to cram into his starting XI.

Frustrated by the Brazilian's incessant step-overs using up all the available time for deflected half-volleys from the edge of the penalty area, Frank Lampard will high-tail it to Internazionale, where former boss Jose Mourinho will give him a big cuddle and promise him that Inter's attacking football will revolve around the sole aim of setting up Lampard for scuffed long-rangers from wherever he happens to find himself on the pitch.

With Ronaldinho expected to complete his move from Barcelona to Milan at any moment, the Catalan club will use the cash to bring in Emmanuel Adebayor from Arsenal, thereby forcing the Gunners into the transfer market in search of a striker.

Alexander Hleb's likely Emirates exit will heap even further pressure on Arsene Wenger to bring in a big-name signing to appease the fans, and with any one of Roque Santa Cruz, Klaas-Jan Huntelaar and Andrei Arshavin set to arrive at the club, Spurs will be stung into action by the sight of their hated rivals splashing the cash in uncharacteristically wanton fashion, bringing Espanyol striker Luis Garcia to White Hart Lane and subsequently facilitating Dimitar Berbatov's transfer to Manchester United.

And with three and a half world class strikers in their squad (balsa-limbed Louis Saha being the half, obviously) United will realise that they don't really need Cristiano Ronaldo after all, and will ease him out of his shackles before plonking him on the first plane to Madrid, thereby bringing to a close the most exciting summer transfer window in living memory.

So if none of this happens, it is demonstrably and unequivocally Benitez's fault. You heard it here first.

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Early Doors is sorry, but £48 million for Robinho? Forty-eight million pounds, for Robinho?

Zinedine Zidane, you may recall, cost £46 million, but Zidane won one World Cup, one European Championship, one European Cup, three league titles and three World Player of the Year Awards, single-handedly dragged a clearly past-it France side to the final of the last World Cup and played football of a beauty that made grown men weep.

The highlight of Robinho's career, by contrast, is probably still the seven stepovers 'n' penalty-winning dive combo he produced in a Brazilian championship decider while playing for Santos in 2002, and despite a thrilling burst of form at the beginning of last season he's yet to convince anyone that he's anything more than an indulgent tricks merchant with a cheeky grin and a commendable dedication to safe sex (he reportedly once asked a nightclub security man to bring him 40 condoms).

If Robinho is worth £48 million then Cristiano Ronaldo has to be worth about £70 million, and ED itself is probably worth somewhere around the £7.5 million mark, despite being a well-worn breakfast-time blog rather than an actual football player.

- - -

QUOTE OF THE DAY: "Today's question: does Rob Wotton ever smile?" Sky Sports News presenter Mike Wedderburn after announcing the channel's presenting line-up for the morning, thereby providing a tantalising glimpse of the thinly disguised torrent of jealous hatred running through the dressing rooms at Sky Sports News HQ.

TALKING POINT: There were 586 comments on ED yesterday, 56 of which were actually about football and 12 of which contributed something worthwhile to the discussion, thanks largely to the shameless nerds who dominate the comments section every day with their stupendously self-interested twaddle.

Highlights from our laziest footballer ever topic, though, included chrisnewman950's verdict on Oliver Kahn, who "just used to stand there watching the game", while adschoey nominated Ray Wilkins for his commitment to sideways passing.

Today: Who is the most over-rated player in football history?

COMING UP: After a rest day yesterday those gristly-thighed, testicularly-discomfited cyclists from the Tour de France are back in action, and you can follow live coverage of their travails from 11:45 BST.

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