The latest rumoured relief for the burning hole in Rom’s pocket

No one cares about money any more, everyone knows that. You could walk into Spurs HQ with £1 billion this afternoon and you wouldn’t even come out with an Aaron Lennon or Younes Kaboul (okay, you might) - football clubs want extras, they want deals. Hence, it’s all about the packaging.

Liverpool, for example, are unlikely to get Gareth Barry unless they throw in a Riise, or even a Crouch, and now it looks like Mr Moneybags over at Chelsea has twigged that it might take more than the smell of Sterling to attract the attention of the Spurs boardroom. He is instead relying on the perfumed allure of Shaun Wright-Phillips and Nicola Anelka to pry the tricky Bulgarian, Dimitar Berbatov, from the North London death grip.

Of course, miserly Arsene Wenger is not a man to splash the cash. Or so everyone thought yesterday. Today it transpires that the scholarly French gentlemen forks out astonishing amounts of money on young players, and now he’s barged the big guns at Man United out of the way to sign Lyon youngster Hatem Ben Arfa.

The zippy left winger was supposed to be heading off to United for £14.4 million, but the player has confirmed that he talked with Arsenal, and may yet be off to North London instead for around £16 million - which is £500 zillion in Wenger currency.

“Today I am at Lyon, we will see what tomorrow is made of,” said Ben Arfa, steeping his sentence in gorgeous mystery.

There is no time to rest in football. Ferguson might have been dancing on the tables last night, but he’d have been back at his desk this morning with a muesli bar from a garage to plan how to best inflict pain on others come August.

Today’s transfer rumours read like this:

Dimitar Berbatov to Manchester United
Wow, where did this one come from? Who knew that Berbs wanted to leave? Might it have something to do with his agent demanding that he leave? As things stand United are front-runners, with Ferguson after a mature football mind to spearhead his attack. But there have also been increasingly fervent whispers echoing in from Barcelona insisting that he can go there if he wants to. Sir Alex will have to be at his most charming and flirtatious to bag this puppy. So to speak.

Samuel Eto’o to Inter Milan
More bad news Spurs. Apparently Inter are set to stroll up to the Barca striker and casually ask whether he’d like to join the Italian champions or the eleventh best Premier League side.

Hope everyone enjoyed the summer - those were two pretty hot days. But don’t wrap up and sit patiently for Christmas just yet, there’s still some movement on the transfer market. Here’s the latest…

Steven Gerrard to Inter Milan
If Crouch is worth £15 million, Benitez probably has Gerrard at around £9 zillion. Inter might need to go back with their £25 million and come back with something a little more realistic, huh Rafa?

Aliaksandr Hleb to Barcelona
Spagetti-legged Hleb is so keen to get away from Arsenal that he’s apparently ready to fork out millions to get out of his contract. All the talk has been of Inter, until today when someone from Barcelona coughed and everyone got suspicious. Spill the beans, Hleb.

When Kevin Keegan isn’t smearing his grubby hands all over their faces, football’s finest businessmen are busy shouting into mobile phones, downing shots of hot coffee, and hanging around in steam rooms persuading footballers to join their club. Just this morning, a bunch of fatties were spotted listening to harp music in big white towels talking about these transactions:

Anton Ferdinand to Tottenham
You have to admire Ramos’ strategy, after all, if he buys every single defender in the Premier League, other teams will have to field children at the back. In the long term, it’s a work of utter genius - have you seen kids play football? They can’t tackle, they’re rubbish.

Steve Sidwell to Everton
Having roared like an inferno with the Chelsea Reserves, it looks like Sidwell might yet pursue a career playing actual competitive football - this time trading Ballack, Lamps and JT, for the second best Neville brother (or seventh if you count 70s Soul group The Neville Brothers), Cahill and Lescott.

Lassana Diarra to Tottenham
Silly us, no one realised that Diarra isn’t looking for a career in football, he’s traveling. And now he’s ready to use his round-the-world ticket on a flight to North London - no doubt wearing some hippy beads and a tattoo that he got done during a crazy full moon party on one of Portsmouth many sandy beaches. Don’t forget your didgeridoo Lassana!

As ever, there was no time last night to revel in the joy of a Paul Scholes stonker, because while football is being played, behind the scenes people in dark suits are having business meetings, and those meetings are very important - they include “guesstimates” and “sushi”. Here’s what may or may not have been talked about in some of those sweaty deep-into-the-night think tanks:

Kamel Ghilas to Arsenal
Arsene Wenger’s team of dehydrated football forragers have once again resurfaced in their mining helmets with soil on their faces muttering like crazy people about an Algerian man called Kamel. At the moment he plays casual football for Portuguese side Vitoria Guimaraes, but next season he looks set to be entertaining Arsenal crowds, who love sexual football and Cesc Fabregas.

Antonio Valencia and Wilson Palacios to Manchester United
Yes, Ferguson will be on the hunt for bright young talents, currently dominating other first teams, to strengthen his reserves, and these two might be just the ticket. They do it week in, week out for Wigan, but can they do it perhaps once every three/four months for United when Nani, Anderson, Carrick, Hargreaves, Scholes, Ronaldo, Giggs, O’Shea, and Fletcher are all injured? Or it’s the Carling Cup?

As excellent evening programmes like Location, Location, Location prove beyond any reasonable doubt, moving house is an almighty bummer, and if you didn’t have people working for you - preferably a smug man in a suit, and a horsey woman who you probably ‘would’ - it would be even worse. So much red tape. And what the hell is stamp duty anyway?

Which leads usefully to Jermaine Jenas, he who has been so richly gifted with football skills, and yet is currently in the throws of a massive house move