Tales from the Tabs – Week ending 7th July

Benteke on his way out?

The Sun

Very little in terms of interesting gossip this week, with the paper foolishly focussing on egg chasing and a Scotsman, sorry Brit. (Dave – still 77 years from an Englishman won Wimbledon…)

The news that is there is barely credible. Spurs are apparently planning on making a late August raid for Christian Benteke, which is sure to be a success. After all, Spurs have never been the victim of a deadline day disaster have they? Although for some reason the name Fraizer Campbell is echoing around in my head…Little else of interest to report, the paper is obviously preparing its Ronaldo to United special edition. After all, it’s only one month until 8th August.

The People

The paper continues with its scatter-gun approach to transfer business. There are no ground-breaking stories, but merely a plethora of gossip, some more entertaining than others. QPR feature prominently, although for some reason the stories are spread separately across two pages, rather than condensed into one article.

Matt Upson, Richard Dunne and Peter Crouch are on ’Arry’s wanted list, while Joey Barton is wanted by Besiktas. Gareth Barry is the first big name linked with the newly founded New York franchise, which will surely have connoisseurs from across the East Coast flocking to see football performed by a true pioneer of the sport – or not, as the case may be.

Other stories see Aly Cissokho off to Liverpool, Victor Wanyama to Everton, Jermain Defoe to Stoke and Stephen Ireland to Middlesbrough to name but a few. Quantity over quality this week, but in comparison to The Sun, something is better than nothing.

The Sunday Mirror

The paper presents an interesting take on the frankly tedious Wayne Rooney saga. It states that fellow team mates are bored of the whole scenario, hinting that they actually want him sold. The first thing to note here is the lack of insignificant features to the article such as quotes or any other supporting evidence.

But these are tabloids and we can live with that, it’s par for the course after all. Secondly, the wonderful concept is raised that if the press report the hell out of a story for long enough, the rest of the squad will become unsettled to the point that the rumoured target will be forced to leave.

Being the kind man that I am, I feel it is my duty to the editor of this website to start the story now that Lionel Messi is off to St Mirren. It is a little known fact that he grew up with posters of Campbell Money and Frank McGarvey on his wall and I can exclusively reveal that he is keen on a move to Love Street. Feel free to do the decent thing and tweet the hell out of this rumour over the next few weeks and I fully expect Xavi and Puyol to start talking about how sick they are of this story and that Messi will have to go.

Hell, if this madness can get published in a national paper, it can get published here. Nothing else of note in the paper, as the previous paragraph may indicate!

Apparently, Messi is hoping to join St.Mirren before the transfer window closes

The Daily Star

You know it is a quiet week when even The Star fails to deliver with any meaningful news. In fact they appear to be re-cycling random stories from the last month in a desperate attempt to fill their transfer pull out section. Seeing the likes of Thiago, Garay and Baines being ‘close’ to Old Trafford, will come as a shock to no-one.

Even the Fellaini to Arsenal story is resurrected as a desperate page filler. Demba Ba is said to be on his way out of Stamford Bridge, whereas Nemanja Matic has turned down the chance to re-join the club from Benfica. The fact that a full page has been given to their superstar columnist, Nigel Winterburn, says perhaps more about the edition than anything that I could hope to write.

As we can see a quiet week across all publications. Lets hope that someone kickstarts this window with a ‘swoop’ or a ‘shock transfer request’ so we can avoid a repeat of this weeks sterile offering. Now if anyone has a contact at AS or Marca, there’s a rumour that is just picking up steam involving Messi playing in Scotland next season…