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.

While Steven Gerrard can be found whimpering on the streets of Liverpool, seriously disgruntled because his club won’t spend enough money on new friends for him, over in the AC quarter of Milan, rumour would suggest that money is swilling around like expensive sparkling wine in a Jermain Defoe bathtub.

Starting from the back, the Italian giants have been linked with Chelsea’s bemasked goal stopper Petr Cech - supposedly the planet’s most beguiling keeper. In front of him, they’re looking to poach France’s Willy Sagnol from Bayern Munich, as well as the Italian crowd pleaser Gianluca Zambrotta, who used to ply his wares so well at Juve before morphing into a less convincing wingback at Barcelona.

Spanish press wonders out loud if the wayward Brazilian had been experimenting with steroids

Reports in Spanish papers over the weekend have attempted to penetrate a little further into the strange tale of Ronaldinho’s visit to a Barcelona clinic under the cover of darkness a couple of weeks ago. Initial reports suggested that he was independently trying to prove his physical well-being to potential purchasers (eg AC Milan) only for doctors to discover he was in far worse condition than anyone had imagined.

Now the rumour mill has cranked out another story, suggesting that his late arrival at the medical facility was due to his consumption of steroids, which were supposed to speed his recovery from a leg injury, but didn’t. Writing in yesterday’s Sport, Jose Luis Carazo says “I am told that in order to show he was in perfect physical condition, Ronaldinho had been taking a powerful nocturnal anabolic formula to improve muscle recovery and performance by up to 250%.”

Brazilian superstar finds room in his crowded nightlife schedule for a trip to a local hospital

Brazilian party boy Ronaldinho, who has spent the last six months of his career at Barcelona working on his reputation as damaged goods, could have a lot more leisure time on his hands if a secretive midnight medical check up turns out to be accurate.

Spanish news website ADN reports that last week Ronaldinho turned up at the Delfos Clinic in Barcelona at 1.30 in the morning with his own private doctor, and unknown to Barcelona medical staff or Frank Rijkaard, underwent a series of x-rays and medical tests that showed his physical state to be far worse than previously imagined - “dire”, in fact.

Rumours are aswirl that the tests were performed at the urging of one of the clubs interested in buying him, and just last week Silvio Berlusconi, who had previously been pursuing the Brazilian with all the ardour of Russell Brand with perfume in his nostrils

The best sports on the telebox tonight

After graciously falling out of this year’s Champions League, Ronaldinho-less Barca must now concentrate their energies on taking second place in La Liga from Villarreal. Tonight, they are 9/4 underdogs in their visit to runaway title contenders Real Madrid - but in the past five seasons, El clásico has been won by the away side four times, and there’s been a shedload of goals too.

Check out the best odds on the match right here.

Indian Premier League Cricket
Mumbai Indians/ Rajasthan Royals (Setanta Sports 1, 3.30pm)

La Liga
Recreativo/ Villarreal (Sky Sports 1, 7pm)
Real Madrid/ Barcelona (Sky Sports 1, 9pm)

Scottish Premier League
Rangers/ Motherwell (Setanta Sports 1, 7.45pm)

French Cup Semi-final
Lyon/ Sedan (Setanta Sports 2, 8pm)

Also appearing on a computer near you…

BBC Producers kill off Ian Wright character in Christmas Special
[The Gaffer]

Formula One Grid Girls galore
[Grid Crasher]

Barcelona want £31.5m for lazy overweight layabout Ronaldinho
[Football 365]

Manchester Utd/ Barcelona first goalscorer betting
[chickendinner]

David Beckham adopts the ‘Uncle Albert’ look (more hair on the bottom of the head than the top)
[Kickette]

Barack Obama has mad basketball skills
[All Balls]

And on an unrelated note: here’s a leaked version of the trailer for The Dark Knight.
[WWTDD]

Top Barcelona executive makes a brave choice of jacket to blow the lid on culture of idleness

Some reports from Spain have reached the English press, regarding the comments of former Barcelona President and head of their Economic Commission Xavier Sala i Martin, who claimed in a radio interview that “There are two or three players at Barcelona who get to mess around all day and who are kept apart from the rest of the team, and at the club we pretend that they are injured.”

He claimed that those players were also being kept apart from the rest of the squad so as not to interfere with day to day business, and that it was those players who were most frequently out at night and trained less than the others.

“There are some players who work hard in spite of having plenty of money and women, and others who out of 60 training sessions

World’s second most expensive footballer could leave Barcelona for a song

Spanish papers are claiming today that Ronaldinho could buy himself out of his contract with Barcelona this summer for as little as 16 million Euros, or £12 million, which means that some lucky team could buy one of the planet’s finest players for significantly less than Darren Bent.

Ronaldinho’s lengthy and mysterious absence from the Barcelona first team suggests the gap between him and the younger Bent is narrowing alarmingly, although one recent guess in a Madrid paper claimed that the Barcelona directors had already had enough of him and his fondness for the night, and had made their minds up to get rid of him. To further develop the Bent theme, Spurs have been

…And loads of other bizarre pointless stuff in new Pepsi advert

Usually, Pepsi adverts are great spectacles - previously, we’ve enjoyed Beckham in a Wild West shootout, and Roberto Carlos and co losing a game to a bunch of overweight Germans. The latest clip from the cola pushers, however, seems like a big ol’ mishmash of crap designed to get as many high profile names into a minute slot: Thierry Henry runs through the jungle in a dinner suit, Beckham as Indiana Jones mysteriously transforms into Cesc Fabregas, and Princess Frank gets all dolled up in a fetching little kimono. It really accentuates his hips, and black is a very flattering colour for the precious midfielder,

It seems that in the world of professional football, right backs and left backs are like the hospital porters compared to the glitzy surgeons nodding them in up front. Not one of the tireless wing-backs features in the Top Fifty earners - not even Mrs Gary Neville, who you would think demands money for breakfast.

Hence, the highest earning XI finds itself having to go with a 3-4-3 formation, which in modern footballing terms, is ridiculous. Still, here they are in all their wealthy glory:

Goalkeeper: Iker Casillas (£114,750/week)

Defenders: Rio Ferdinand (£96,581), John Terry (£130,050), Sol Campbell (£105,188)

Midfield: Cristiano Ronaldo (£122,400), Frank Lampard (£130,050), Steven Gerrard (£122,400), Michael Ballack (£124,313)

Forwards: Kaka (143,438), Ronaldinho (£135,788), Fernando Torres (£126,225)

Think your rabble could beat them?