Palermo reject £33m bid for Pastore? | Higuaín available for £15m? | Palacios off to Napoli?
Guus Hiddink is ready to sign up for Chelsea's title chase, but might have to do without Didier Drogba, who has emerged as Milan's £10m-ish top striking target, narrowly ahead of Emmanuel Adebayor. And he might also have to do without Javier Pastore, with Palermo turning down Chelsea's £33m offer for the Argentina winger. "The price is £44m," said the Italian club's president, Maurizio Zamparini. "There are five or six clubs interested."Adebayor's current and former clubs, Manchester City and Arsenal, are among the English sides intrigued by rumours that Real Madrid are ready to sell Gonzalo Higuaín for a knock-down £15m. But at a fraction of an inch over 6ft the fairly averagely tall Argentinian is unlikely to meet Arsène Wenger's publicly announced primary aim in the transfer market: to ensure "bigger variety in the size of his squad". A boon for players who are either particularly short or particularly tall — perhaps Peter Crouch won't have to leave north London this summer after all.
Gérard Houllier has agreed a pay-off to leave Aston Villa, estimated at £2m by the Express, £2.5m by the Mirror and £5m by the Sun. But Fulham, current employers of Randy Lerner's top target, Mark Hughes, have told him to clear off. Lerner, that is, not Hughes. Although, having said that, according to the Mail, Hughes is a free agent after a break clause in his contract kicked in on Wednesday night.
Dimitar Berbatov has promised never to leave Old Trafford, insisting: "I will stay and I will fight for the 20th title. If I were a quitter I would never have made it this far." Equally unlikely to leave Manchester is City's German flop Jérôme Boateng. Bayern Munich hoped to tempt the defender back to his homeland for £7m, but have been shocked by City's demand for an additional £11m, which would give them a 50% profit on the player they signed last summer and hardly played all season. Presumably City's chief valuation officer lives in an alternate universe where a bizarre succession of niggly injuries actually increase a player's worth.
Inevitable Tottenham rumours of the day: Wilson Palacios is to sign for Napoli, either on loan or for £7m or £8m or £15m, depending on which paper you read. "The next few days will be key for my future," the midfielder said. Harry Redknapp wants to bring in the much-hyphenated Rennes defender Jean-Armel Kana-Biyik, who the French side value at £2m per hyphen and is also a target for managerless Villa.
Liverpool have identified Charlie Adam, James McCarthy and Jordan Henderson as prime targets to rejuvenate their midfield, with Wigan's chairman, Dave Whelan, admitting of McCarthy that "in the end, of course, [we will] have to let him go, there's no question about that". The speculation has inevitably led to massive transfer fees being demanded for all three players, with Liverpool particularly upset about the "ridiculous" (according to the Mail's source) price tag placed on Henderson, rumoured to be as high as £20m, by Sunderland, who want to totally rebuild their squad and need some extra cash to do so. Wigan, incidentally, think they can sign the Almería midfielder Hernán Bernardello for £3m, but have had a £2m bid for their former loanee Ali al-Habsi turned down by Bolton. And Blackpool might want big money for Adam but they'll get nowt for David Vaughan, who is a big-wage target for Birmingham.
Reading are all set to be punished for their failure to win promotion by seeing a veritably player exodus, with winger Jimmy Kébé on QPR's radar and prolific striker Shane Long currently being pursued by Celtic, Everton and Newcastle. Everton, though, are among the clubs — also including Sunderland — attempting to snaffle Demba Ba from West Ham, while Newcastle's scouts have also reported favourably on the Toulouse full-back Cheikh M'Bengue. So favourably, in fact, that the club bid £5.4m for the player on Wednesday, though the offer was promptly rejected. The Hammers might replace Ba with perennial Big Sam favourite El-Hadji Diouf, currently of Blackburn.
Talking of Blackburn, bidding on eBay for the Ewood Park penalty spot from which Wayne Rooney scored Manchester United's title-winning goal was about to pass £1m when we went to virtual press, though it is not yet known how many bids have been put in as a joke by bored nine-year-olds. Talking of Manchester United, they have put their fourth-choice right-back, Wes Brown, up for sale.
Norwich are preparing a new offer for their top transfer target, Millwall's ex-Stevenage striker Steve Morison, closer to the £3m the Lions demand than the £2.6m they had rejected. But fellow promotees Swansea are set to lose midfielder Darren Pratley for nothing, with the 26-year-old believed to have agreed a Bosman switch to Bolton. The Trotters also want a new striker, with Vitória Guimarães' alliterative Tiago Targino apparently high on their list.
Fulham have offered £1m for Bournemouth's 19-year-old striking prodigy Danny Ings, while Peterborough want his team-mate Jason Pearce for half that amount. By the time Ings arrives at Craven Cottage he might find Stephen Kelly has moved on, with the out-of-favour full-back insisting: "I want to play all the time." Of course his current employers have nothing against him playing all the time, so long as what he's playing isn't football.
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