Tales from the Tabs – Sunday 28th July

Dull, boring, clueless, defying all logic and an utter waste of time. Ladies and gentlemen, not a description of 90 minutes spent watching St.Mirren but how this transfer window has panned out so far. Very few salacious stories involving English clubs, who instead have looked on wistfully whilst the swarthy millionaires of France, Spain and Germany have had their way with the available talent. But all that looks set to change and the transfer world is expected to revolve around four names. Names who you just may have heard of before, and who you should expect to hear a lot more about over the next four weeks – Messrs Cesc Fabregas, Gareth Bale, Luis Suarez and Wayne Rooney…

Talk of the town – Gareth Bale

The Sun

There is no better way to kick off a transfer story than including a couple of big names as part of an exchange. Ignoring the fact that these very rarely happen (the exceptions of course being Zlatan/Eto’o and Berbatov and erm, Fraizer Campbell), The Sun reels us in with a cracker. Real Madrid are offering Angel di Maria, Fabio Coentrao and £51m for Scotland’s favourite winger, Gareth Bale. Yeah.

Following on from that, news reaches us that the infamous ‘war chest’ is about to be unleashed by Jose Mourinho, containing £30m to grab everyone’s favourite slim and trim Scouser, Wayne Rooney. The article features a spell binding piece of logic from Rob Beasley, that frankly needs repeating in full. To quote:

“But he (Mourinho) maintains the 27-year-old is his ONLY target this summer. So when he talks transfers he must be talking about Rooney”.

It’s the type of insightful, investigative journalism that Roger Cook could only ever have dreamt of. No news of Suarez and Fabregas unfortunately, but I’m sure there will be news elsewhere regarding these two…

The People

…and here is that news. Fabregas, we are told, is set to stay at Barcelona as he has been promised that he is key to their plans. Come on Cesc, surely the prospect of threading through balls to Ashley Young and Antonio Valencia can tempt you away? Meanwhile, Suarez is reported to be deciding against moving to Arsenal as he doubts their Champions League prospects…still better than Liverpool’s though, aren’t they Luis? Spurs are asking for a cool £100m for Gareth Bale and the paper repeat the claims from Mourinho about only paying up to £30m for Rooney.

Now that we’ve got ‘The Big Four’ out of the way, we can look at some other stories. Bayern Munich seemingly have a surplus of midfielders and Chelsea want to help them out by taking Luiz Gustavo off their hands for £15m. Joe Kinnear seems intent on playing up to his stereotype by lining up Phil Bardsley as his first signing.

Shockingly, Roberto Martinez is looking at a player who didn’t play for him at Wigan, Gary Medel of Sevilla. Robert Snodgrass to West Ham and Kyle Naughton to Southampton wrap up this week’s offering from the paper.