Well the rain is back, for a moment there we almost forgot where we were. Seconds away from flowery necklaced women and silky hula music playing in the streets, probably. Just thank hecky we’ve still got football gossip and transfers to keep us all sweaty and uncomfortable.

Ronaldinho and Deco in exchange for Kaka
A couple of years ago, had anyone even thought about exchanging Ronaldinho for another player, teams of armed police would have been lining buildings within seconds, shouting through loud hailers to put the drugs down and step away from the vehicle. Sir, we said step AWAY! How times have changed. Now Barcelona can offer Ronaldinho and Deco for Kaka and no one even sniffs their breath for whiskey.

The Spoiler Truth-o-meter: The rumour is that Barca are offering the two players and around £16 million. AC are unlikely to bite.

Andriy Shevchenko to Fenerbahce
After wowing English fans with his brilliance, Shevchenko may yet astonish the people of Turkey by taking his travelling football circus to Fenerbahce. Prepare to be dazzled, Turklings!

The Spoiler Truth-o-meter: Should AC Milan pass, Shevchenko needs to go somewhere. Not out of the question.

Top La Liga boss combines childlike artistic talent with vision of a lunatic

After Barcelona’s 1-1 draw at the weekend against local irritants Espanyol, the daily Sport newspaper came across some very interesting sketches, containing Barcelona manager Frank Rijkaard’s scribblings as to how to win the derby.

One document (pictured) seemed to involve Barcelona defending a corner by herding the entire Espanyol side over to the touchline while Yaya Toure ran in from the corner flag to chase the ball out of his six yard area. “Gudjonshen”, presumably less than delighted to discover his boss only had the most passing familiarity with the correct spelling of his name, would meanwhile run unmarked in a little dotted line across the D.

Disappointingly, this tactical hallucination failed to materialise during the game, although whether it was due to Barcelona’s poor herding technique or Espanyol’s turning a deaf ear to the Catalan translations of “come by” and “good bitch” is not clear. Either way, the dark art of management has acquired a fresh cloak of mystery with the discovery of the “the Rijkaard configuration”. Perhaps those gigantic managerial salaries are no coincidence after all.