Yes, it sounds like a dilemma faced by a man choosing a temporary tattoo, but transfer deadline day was as gripping as ever. In Liverpool, hairdressers were distraught to see their best customer flock to London, citing ‘it was definitely not about money...uh...I just like the accent better’. To add insult to injury for these poor scouse barbers, he was replaced by a man that can only be described as Grant Mitchell, if he’d be on a gap year to Thailand to ‘find himself’.
Elsewhere in London, Arsene Wenger pretended not to notice the whole kerfuffle going on around him; instead choosing to concentrate on his Championship Manager 2010 career. Unfortunately, his Scunthorpe team were relegated to the Blue Square Conference, after he sold his first team and re-invested in Senegalese children.
The big news was of course Andy Carroll’s £35m move to Liverpool; a man with the same amount of England caps as myself, Francis Jeffers and the entire Conservative cabinet combined, and has scored fewer career goals than millions Liverpool have paid for him. Short of offering a chance for Alan Shearer to swap his indecently tight trousers and a regular place on the Match of The Day sofa for a chance to run after the hoofs of Kyrgiakos, this would have been one of the ridiculous transfers ever made, had it not been made by the untouchable King Kenny. Liverpool fans would still worship the Scottish saint had he brought Gary Neville for £30m to just stand in front of the Kop and perform a striptease, ending with Neville’s decency being preserved by a sign saying: ‘ This dance was sponsored by Bill Hicks and George Gillett’.
Heading back down south in a cloud of hair spray was ex fan favourite, El Nino. This was yet another example of the average player’s list of priorities. Surprisingly, loyalty and a desire to please the fans that have your name printed on the back of their replica shirt and contemplate naming their children after you, do not feature that high on that list. Personally, I have a strong suspicion that he’ll have a whale of a time down there. I’m sure Torres, Ashley Cole and John Terry have hit it off straight away and spent Torres’s first night in London in some seedy karaoke bar, followed by a kebab and a spit-roast with Petr Cech’s wife. Classy.
In an event overshadowed by Liverpool and Chelsea’s reckless spending spree, Freddy Adu was loaned from Benfica to a Turkish second division side, whose name does not herald a quick Google search. If, as every cosmopolitan tween football fan, you read Match magazine, the mere mention of Freddy Adu’s name should at least provoke a half hearted ‘oh yeah’. This was the American boy who was predicted to set the football world alight. Man Utd were rumoured to be interested in him, when he was just 14 and he had the world at his feet. It’s particularly poignant that as the third highest transfer fee was being paid, Adu was continuing his rapid slide into obscurity. However, he has saved himself from the inevitable ‘Much Ado About Nothing’-esque tabloid headlines, so who’s the real winner?