Football transfer rumours: Vincenzo Iaquinta to Chelsea?

Posted Friday, January 08, 2010 by theguardian.com

Today's fluff can't feel its extremities

Football transfer rumours: Vincenzo Iaquinta to Chelsea?
Vincenzo Iaquinta feels that knee twinge. Photograph: AP

Some things, of course, just have to get through. Not necessarily important things, like the post, or bread in the Mill's clinically depressed local Tesco Metro, or people who have to go to school, or fat blokes in lurid yellow coats employed to shovel snow off the pitch at major football stadiums. But other things like kebab-pizza-fusion delivery leaflets, wizened, pale, hunted-looking men who ring your bell wanting to sell you gloves and bin bags.

And of course, transfer tittle-tattle: those essential mistruths and exaggerations couched in certainties to propound a self-serving commercial agenda. Yes, nothing stops the Mill getting through. Like Kevin Costner knitting together a disparate post-apocalyptic community using just a humble satchel and a sickly and pious facial expression – and, like Kevin Costner, in the process flushing down the post-apocalyptic snow-fringed toilet a once mildly promising career – the Mill will always be there, a vital sixth or maybe seventh emergency service, after the proper ones and things like your parents' spare room and the 24-hour garage that secretly sells lager and terrible wine.

So this morning the Sun has EXCLUSIVE news that Gary Neville will retire from waddling, pointing, swearing and panting heavily at the end of the season. West Ham are the subject of a three-way "bidding war" between respectable businessman David Sullivan, something called Intermarket, which sounds like a warehouse-style shop in a very small provincial town where you can buy 500 bags of Belgian crisps for £2.99, and unsuccessful Steve Coogan character Tony Fernandes.

Roberto Mancini will today complete the signing of Patrick Vieira, spend 40 minutes applying a pea-sized amount of high end almond-oil unction to a single misaligned strand of hair at the back of his bespoke smart-casual mullet, and then turn his attentions to highly rated Danish defender Simon Kjaer, available for £18m from Palermo.

Newcastle are after Napoli striker and Old Testament character Ezequiel Lavezzi. Lavezzi is known as "The Tank" in Argentina because he likes to sit in your loft wrapped in toxic lagging and occasionally making gurgling sounds.

Alex Ferguson will have to pay £40m for "Marseille wonder winger" Hatem Ben Arfa. "I don't believe it will happen but the market lasts another month," Marseille president Jean-Claude Dassier said, wrestling wonder winger Hatem Ben Arfa into an exotic leopard print basque and forcing him to perform an awkwardly clumping dance of seduction on the front steps of the Stade Vélodrome. QPR skipper Mikele Leigertwood is planning to sign a new £10,000-a-week three-year deal. "I want to stay and put down roots," he said, rustling his foliage. Steve Coppell won't be back at Reading. And brooding, handsome, smouldering, lumbering, almost immobile Roque Santa Cruz could be off on loan to Espanyol.

In the Mirror Ryan Babel is being "forced out of Liverpool". Birmingham are outside making cooing noises and holding out a fun-sized Milky Way. Sunderland are "set to swoop" for Kevin Kuranyi and his sculpted goatee beard. The Schalke 04 striker is available for £3m, a new pair of cowboy boots, a gold Zippo lighter and four tickets to see the Scorpions. Fulham are after Jamie O'Hara. Arsène Wenger is "tracking the "new Adebayor", sulky, ambling, touchline goal dancing mercenary CFR Cluj striker Lacine Traoré, who is 19 years old and 6ft 8in tall. In the Daily Mail Kuranyi is off to Sunderland, to replace Kenwyne Jones, who is going somewhere else. Benni McCarthy is all set to "solve Everton's striker crisis", presumably by patting Louis Saha's forelock, blowing up his nostrils and then letting off a single shotgun round to the back of his skull before walking off shaking his head and looking sad and wondering what's for lunch. Olympiakos want Yossi Benayoun and Morten Gamst Pedersen, but they don't want Olympiakos.

Bolton are after Bosnian international Safet Nadarevic, who plays for Turkish phlegm-clearance Eskisehirspor. "My manager told me that next Monday I should travel to England to have a conversation with Bolton," he said, doing whatever his manager told him even if it was jumping off a cliff or putting his hand in a fire. Arsenal and Manchester United both want a slice of Cardiff defender Adam Matthews. But at least there's something Gary Neville can help with if Alex Ferguson is too busy to... ah.

In the Times Chelsea are making eyes at Juventus striker Vincenzo Iaquinta, who is 30 years old and recovering from a serious knee injury and would cost £8m. So should all work out fine then. Arsenal, Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester City have been "watching" Victor Moses of Crystal Palace who will cost £4m.

Fulham and Birmingham both want to buy Serbia striker Danijel Ljuboja, available for a knockdown £1m from Grenoble. And Blackburn have given a trial to delicious Italian pasta dish Amine Linganzi, who plays for St Etienne.