Today’s gossip, rumours and damned lies

Gareth Barry is still working on his ‘Mr Popular’ reputation by getting himself banned from Aston Villa’s training ground. According to The Times, he is reluctant to put in an official transfer request as he will miss out on loyalty payments. And who is more deserving of loyalty payments than the man who has insisted that he wants to leave his current employers high and dry?

Elsewhere, Arsene Wenger is leading the race to see the spectacle of Andrei Arshavin sign a contract while looking in the opposite direction, and it will cost The Gunners around £15m for the privilege…

Emmanuel Adebayor to Barcelona
AC Milan conceded defeat in the pursuit of the Arsenal striker yesterday, but Barca have upped their bid.

The Spoiler Truth-o-meter: His head may have been turned

Andrei Arshavin to Arsenal
If Barca break the bank for Adebayor, then maybe they won’t need Arshavin, leaving Arsenal to replace the Togolese striker and have some money to spare.

The Spoiler Truth-o-meter: Chelsea may also bid - Abramovich has allegedly demanded a Russian.

Samuel Eto’o/ Florent Malouda exchange
Malouda is officially a flop after one season, and at Chelsea you rarely get a second chance.

Scolari wants every single big name player in the world, apparently

The newspapers should just ‘fess up and admit it - they haven’t a clue who which players Luiz Felipe Scolari would like to bring to Chelsea. Naturally, they have all assumed the Brazilian will want to load the squad with his fellow countrymen - The Sun fancy Ronaldinho to come for £20m and £120k a week (a damn site cheaper than the supposed Manchester City asking price), while The Guardian believe Kaka will be strolling over to West London, in exchange for a £60m slice of Abramovich’s bottomless kitty.

The Guardian also claims that Fernando Torres could become subject to Big Phil’s fiery temper next year - the unlikely move could ease Liverpool’s financial woes, but the Kop faithful would probably sooner burn a couple of Americans at the stake than let their prettyboy striker go. That said, the Spanish press linked him with a move to Chelsea over a month ago.

Not wanting to be left out in all the madness, middle England housewives’ favourite The Daily Mail have waded in by suggesting that Franck Ribery is also ‘flattered by their formal approach’.

Other players linked with the club since Scolari’s arrival include Barcelona’s Deco and Samuel Eto’o, and also Spurs target David Villa.

For a man who is currently engrossed in the process of winning a European Championships and has only been formally linked with Chelsea for two days, this seems like an awful lot of transfer inquiries.

So which rumours do you believe? Let us know who you think will be at The Bridge next season with a comment below.

[Picture: The Sun]

Reserve striker calling the shots at the Bridge

According to this morning’s Independent, the top brass at Chelsea are showing their football nous by giving peripheral benchwarmer Andriy Shevchenko an important role in selecting the next team manager. The West London club are still keen on hiring Milan’s Carlo Ancelotti (you know, the chap who has turned them down a couple of times already), and the man who couldn’t persuade his way into the first team has been asked to persuade the Italian:

The 31-year-old striker is one of several people Abramovich has consulted over the recruitment of a new coach and is understood to have urged him to carry on with his pursuit of the man he played under at Milan, despite being rebuffed last week.

Originally Abramovich had only intended to speak to Ancelotti to ask him his opinion on who he should appoint but, under the advice of Shevchenko among others, he decided to offer the 48-year-old the post.

In other news, the groundsman who punched Patrice Evra has been asked to lure Samuel Eto’o to the club, while a 17-year-old girl who works at a burger stand in the Shed End will be holding interviews for a new marketing director.

Today’s transfer rumours, written down one after the other

One of the more surprising transfer rumours to surface during this year’s European Championships doesn’t involve a journalist-hating Barcelona star or a strange looking Frenchman, but rather a member of the BBC’s intrepid pundit squad. If the loud whispers are to be believed, Blackburn are planning to choose Alan Shearer over, well, a manager with a shred of experience and tactical nous. Hey, remember that season where he scored all those goals? Yeah! Whoo! Goals! Sign him up…

Alan Shearer to Blackburn
Shearer’s emergence as favourite for the Blackburn job is bringing delight to millions across the country - could he finally vacate his Match of the Day seat to the vastly superior Lee Dixon?

The Spoiler Truth-o-meter: Shearer is waiting for them to call, rather than actually applying for the job. With this approach, he could be waiting a while.

Samuel Eto’o to Chelsea
Whoever is in charge at the Bridge has identified everyone’s favourite journalist-headbutting striker as the ideal replacement for Didier Drogba, the striker everyone wants to headbutt. Mourinho and Inter could stand in the way.

The Spoiler Truth-o-meter: More likely than a move to Spurs

Franck Ribery to Chelsea
The one-time Arsenal target is said to be another at the top of Chelsea’s wish list, and it’s unlikely the £31 million price tag Bayern have slapped on will scare them off.

The Spoiler Truth-o-meter: Would Chelsea dare break their ‘one flair player’ quota?

Patrick Vieira to Portsmouth
Harry Redknapp is optimistic that Vieira would

All today’s rumours in a big sexy list

While the football season ended about a week ago, Rafa Benitez had built up so much talking momentum that his mouth has failed to stop, and the last few days have seen him overheard by passers-by droning about how he wants more money, and Wenger’s an idiot, and he’s the boss of the best team ever, and the world is cruel. He wants money! More money! Arrrrrggggghhhhh!…. shut up, Rafa. Shut up and read.

Samuel Eto’o to Chelsea
Having previously failed to sign Luka Modric, it really looks like Chelsea are keen to lose all of Tottenham’s transfer targets. At this rate Spurs might start thinking they’re a big club. What’s that? They do already? Very funny.

The Spoiler Truth-o-meter: This one could depend on Frank Rijkaard

Frank Lampard to Inter Milan…again
The Daily Mirror seem to be on top form again. On the very same day that every other paper leads with the story that Roberto Mancini will reject Chelsea and stay at Inter, the Mirror report that Jose Mourinho is definitely off to Italy and Lampard will be joining him. Those people are either way ahead of the game, or stuck in April.

The Spoiler Truth-o-meter: Hmmmmmmmm

Ahh, Saint George’s Day - the one day of the year when you can go into the office with your tatts out and blood on your knuckles and no one even bats an eyelid. Because if they do, that’s fighting talk, their eyelid is taking the mick, thinking it’s better than you. Stupid eyelid, coming over here in it’s boat, sneaking past customs, taking our women…

Makes you proud to be English.

The Saint George’s transfer talk reads a little something like this:

Steve Sidwell to Aston Villa
Aston Villa goes to bed every single night and dreams of becoming a Top Four/Five club - and word has it that to make such a transition you need to sell your best player to Liverpool, and bring in Chelsea’s… wait for it… STEEEEEEVE Siiiiiiidwelllllll - hang on, that can’t be right…

Samuel Eto’o to Tottenham
Eto’o said, verbatum: “If next year we continue the same without winning titles here, I will have to go to another place because what I want is to win.” Spurs bloggers heard: “I very much adore Juande Ramos and would love to come to Tottenham Hotspur to defend the Carling Cup.” Unlikely, surely?

Could Kevin Keegan’s fantasy of signing the old crock come true?

Seems like Thierry Henry, signed with great fanfare during the summer as the best person to help return Barcelona’s foot to its rightful place on Real Madrid’s throat, is not having quite the desired effect on their fortunes. Neither Barcelona nor Mr Henry are particularly thrilled at this outcome. Henry’s former teammate, Robert Pires, who now trundles around at Villarreal, said at the weekend “If I told you Thierry was happy you’d call me a liar.”

Henry, who had to suffer the indignity of being substituted (something that never happened at Arsenal) in Saturday’s home defeat to Villarreal, left the stadium in a strop without waiting to say goodbye to his old chum. When Pires went to the dressing room to find him, the maestro had gone, although “He did leave me a shirt all nicely folded up,” said Pires.

The reasons for Henry’s failure to set the team on fire - although he is still the second top scorer - are: 1) Too many injuries, especially a serious back problem; 2) He’s being played out of position, and often

Er…don’t think you’re coming here, says Barcelona

Just before the Ivory Coast’s surprise semi-final exit from the Africa Cup of Nations this week, Didier Drogba took advantage of the media throng to publicly discuss his plans for the summer again. Those plans involve taking a one-way ticket from London to a large continental team, in spite of having signed a contract with Chelsea in 2006 in which he agreed to play for them until 2010 in exchange for an immense sum of money.