“Woody’s” mildly surprising north-south switch sends the rumour mill whirling like a top

Jonathan Woodgate’s unexpected passing through the transfer window in a southerly direction has provoked a noticeable outbreak of chatter, not least because Woodgate seemed even fonder of the Teesside area than his local tourist board.

“My granddad lived round the corner from Ayresome Park, on Brompton Street, my Dad was born on Brompton Street and grew up there. It’s in the blood, I’m a Boro fan, I love Middlesbrough and the dream has always been to play for Middlesbrough” was just one of the “Boro-’til-I-die,” comments made by Woodgate since returning from Madrid 18 months ago. So why does he now love Spurs more?

Back in the seventies, an England player with a famous northern club made the strange decision to turn his back on their annual collection of trophies in order to seek out a new challenge with a perennially underachieving London side. A famous comedian, so the story goes, was not happy with the player’s advances towards his daughter and had his scary henchmen drive him out of town.

Mr Woodgate is now the subject of a similarly baroque and implausible fantasy, which ends with him being searched for by something called the “Teesside mafia.” In the unlikely event that such an organisation a) exists and b) gives a flying one about Jonathan Woodgate, then he shouldn’t be too hard to find. He’ll be at Wembley on Wednesday, at Pride Park, Derby on Saturday, then after that he’ll probably be in and out of the North Middlesex Hospital for the rest of the season.