Can We Have Some Decent Transfer Rumours Please?

It`s the New Year, the transfer window is open and the silly season is in full swing with the various media outlets competing to see who can come up with the daftest suggestions.

An early front-runner is the idea touted by the Sunday Express that ‘Tottenham, Portsmouth and Bolton are in the hunt for Sheffield Wednesday’s £5m-rated goalkeeper Lee Grant.` The Whites have tied Jussi Jaaskelainen and Ali Al-Habsi to four deals and have the outstanding prospect that is Adam Bogdan as back up. We realise that the Express haven`t much time left after they`ve finished vilifying anyone who isn`t a Nazi, but even they should be doing better than this.

Almost as gormless is the story on Tribal Football linking Dietmar Hamann with a move back to the Reebok. We say ‘back to` as the horrible Hamann signed for Bolton in 2006, before deciding the next day that he`d rather play for Manchester City. That other organ of truth and decency, the Sun newspaper, claimed that Hamann fled to Middle Eastlands because he couldn`t understand the staff in the McDonalds outlet close to Bolton’s ground. Granted, Maccy D`s isn`t known for employing intellectual giants, but you`d think that a German who had lived and worked on Merseyside would be equipped to quote with the most difficult of linguistic situations. Not that the midfielder with a taste for nutritionally gruesome snacks has been much of a loss. Since moving to Manchester`s biggest council house, he`s either been injured or in poor form.

West Ham sicknote Calum Davenport has also been mentioned in connection with Bolton. This seems more credible if not reassuring. A centre-half who couldn`t cut it as those defensive disasters Spurs, is not a mouth-watering prospect.