The players who should have stayed put in the new year

Provided that Manchester City get their chequebook out and kick start the financial merry-go-round,  this January is sure to bring plenty of interesting movement in the transfer market. With this in Mind, The Spoiler decided to build a team of the worst January deals to go down since the window’s 2003 inception…

Ben Alnwick (Sunderland to Spurs, 2007) - £900,000
He didn’t exactly break the bank, but Alnwick has been at Tottenham for almost two years without troubling the first team. Instead, he has been farmed out on loan to Carlise, Leicester and Luton.

Jan Kromkamp (Villareal to Liverpool, 2006) - Swap
Forget finding Fernando Torres a new strike partner; Benitez’s main problem is deciding on his fullbacks: he has signed two per year for the past three years while the likes of John Arne Riise, Steve Finnan and Stephen Warnock have been shown the door. While Liverpool didn’t pay anything for Kromkamp (he was swapped for another crap right-back Josemi), he was useless. Jan made a handful of appearances but Rafa realised his mistake and moved him on just seven months later.

Jean-Alain Boumsong (Rangers to Newcastle, 2005) - £8m
Boumsong only lasted a year in the north-east but it was enough time to gain him the accolade as one half of ‘the Chuckle Brothers Live Show’, along with comedy sidekick Titus Bramble.

Ricardo Rocha (Benfica to Spurs, 2007) - £3.3m
The Portuguese has made 13 starts in the league over nearly two years and has failed

The latest transfer news fresh from the rumour vine

Arsene Wenger recently rocked the footballing world by sending a fax to Milan, warning them to stop sniffing around Emmanuel Adebayor. The threat in itself wasn’t the shock, but rather his method of communication - Internazionale’s fax machine had probably been lying dormant since 1989 when the Frenchman’s choice words came through. If he runs out of fax paper, which surely can’t be bought in the 21st century, he’ll probably end up sending a telegram or a small messenger boy in a toga to Barcelona…

Emmanuel Adebayor to Barcelona
Arsene Wenger had just finished mopping his brow at the news Milan would accept Arsenal’s decision not to sell Adebayor when Barcelona rode in to declare the striker their number one target.

The Spoiler Truth-o-meter: A possibility considering Eto’o is leaving

Dani Guiza to Arsenal
But don’t fear Arsenal fans, what better way to recover from the loss of the Premier League’s joint-second goalscorer than by replacing him with La Liga’s number one?

The Spoiler Truth-o-meter: Maybe, Champions League clubs are bound to chase

Claude Makelele, Lillian Thuram, Robert Pires and Ludovic Giuly to Paris Saint Germain
Some bright spark at PSG has decided it would be a stroke of genius to bring together a group of French veterans who would surely take the league by storm and guarantee instant success.

The Spoiler Truth-o-meter: It seems not everyone in France watched Euro 2008

Peter Crouch to Portsmouth
Harry Redknapp has told

All the big news written down in a list

Something about Paul McCartney taking his Beatle’s stage show to Anfield suggests that people all over Europe might be standing back and hailing Liverpool as the European Capital of Culture around thirty or forty years too late. That said, anyone who doesn’t erupt into tears at the thought of drunk Liverpudlians weeping Yesterday in their thousands should be seriously investigated. In other moving news…

Mark Hughes to Manchester City
Suddenly everyone wants Mark Hughes to take care of their boys - first Abramovich, now these guys. His white hair demands respect, but could a man destined to manage United really do a job at City?

The Spoiler Truth-o-meter: Surely not.

Michael Essien to Inter Milan
Of course, everyone has been bigging up the chances of Lampsie, Drog-drog and Carvalho heading East to spend quality time with his special highness, but now it seems young Essien has bounced to the front of the queue brandishing a big red apple.