Archive for January 10th, 2007
The state of play
Current state of play - thanks as usual to Steve B and Barra Boy, as well as others whose digging has helped us learn more than would otherwise have been the case!:
Onyewu - Standard Liege have accepted our offer for the BIG MAN, Gooch must now decide whether to accept it. He was supposed to do so yesterday, but didn’t. This may be because another club, believed to be Inter Milan, are in for him too. We can all see his dilemma, but one would hope that the Fulham-America bond is strong enough to coax him our way. Presumably American Airlines, our official partner, would throw in some free flights in First Class
Dempsey - work permit decided today. We have submitted paperwork and so he’d be available to play a week on Saturday. By now you’d have to assume it’s a goer, Dempsey’s been in limbo in London for some time now. If it doesn’t go through the club will appeal in the summer
Routledge - Spurs linked with both Ashley Young and Stuart Downing and Routledge (clearly not in their plans) turned down a swap move to Watford. No news on Fulham’s perspective, which presumably means that Coleman wants to see how the window plays out before committing either way. At least he’s getting games now
Thomas - we have been strongly linked with the Charlton winger. Word on the street is that Charlton fans are amused at the amount we’ve bid
Smertin - West Ham supposedly close to a deal, but is this Steve B’s mystery midfielder? Would we gazump the Hammers after they were nice enough to give us £5 million for Boa?
Murphy - Jol apparantly doesn’t want to lose Murphy, who would be keen to come to Fulham. But I really don’t know about this one, it doesn’t feel right
Davies - Everton’s midfielder seems destined to be a last resort signing, so if we get him it’ll be late in the window
Eastwood - the bubbling rumour stew has been taken off the stove and left on the work surface. Will anyone eat it?
Montella - is here! So here that the club has given him number 11 and printed off t-shirts with his name on them!
Jankovic - GBLB on TFI has used his Serbian connections to reveal that we’re ‘very much in the hunt’ for the young winger, currently playing in Spain. Jankovic has a minimum fee release clause too, which would be triggered at about £2.7 million. This would make him a huge bargain in GBLB’s eyes; he had previously assumed that the Serb was out of our league
Hislop - not linked to us, but surely we could really do with an experienced backup goalkeeper? Shaka showed in the World Cup that he still has his mojo
Beckham - last night’s exclusive has still not hit the mainstream media. We must then assume that this will not happen, at least not in this version of the universe. In others it may well happen
Jensen - Niclas that is - has gone, we’re told
Jensen, Claus - was rumoured to be on his way, but must presumably be mulling over Coleman’s ‘take it or leave it’ contract offer
John - speaking with Watford today. The Hornets are improving their offer to Collins. By making the acceptance of the offer public Coleman made quite a statement (as in “you are free to go, Mr John”), so one would imagine John will end up somewhere else
Diarra - pissed people off by getting stuck in traffic before the Macclesfield game, so they didn’t get a last look at him. Who knows? Mourinho is said to be keen to let him go out on loan
Etherington - rumoured to be a throw in with Boa, but that’s slowed. May be joining us still, but not much word either way
Wright-Phillips - someone said they saw him at Motspur Park last night. But we have three loanees at present, and I think that’s the maximum. We wouldn’t be buying him would we?
Boa Morte - “Chris, West Ham are on the phone, they want Boa Morte” - “Tell them to go away, I’m just going to the toilet” - “I can’t, they’ve phoned several times already. They won’t leave me alone” - “Ok… try this. Just say £5 and a half million pounds! That’ll get rid of them! I’ll talk to them later and negotiate a sensible price” - “Ok…. Chris? They’ve said yes!”
