Geraldo Wendel to Spurs | Antoine Griezmann to Liverpool | Sol Campbell to Hull

Observed every morning through the Mill’s emerald prism of rumour, half-truth, lies and things that appear in the Daily Star, football can look like a deeply envious kind of place. To the Mill’s unblinking green-hued gimlet eye this is a world of jealousy, grasping aspiration and sweaty men in shiny suits who make stuff up and have meetings in horrible wine bars with other shiny-suited men, at least one of whom is a nervous BBC journalist with a camera hidden in his satchel, in order to make more stuff up.

It’s natural in this world to want to be someone else. The Mill, for example, has always assumed it would be happiest as a long-serving and inoffensive Premier League full-back slash defensive utility man. The kind of faithful club servant who plays for 10 years without ever convincing anyone he’s actually very good, but just hangs in there maybe picking up a Carling Cup medal, maybe playing a single chaotic season in the Europa League, and never having to appear in the newspapers having opinions, or get booed for some tribal faux pas, just turning up and being OK. But through it all still being able to live in a monogrammed palatial converted bog draining plant in Cheshire with a cinema room and gold leaf Jacuzzi hot tub, and retiring at 35 to do nothing but play golf and be rich and mooch around Dubai with Steve McManaman. This is the Mill’s mediocre dream of a life cushioned by the dumb luck of unmerited riches.

Failing that, The Mill wouldn’t mind being an apparently indestructible heavily-tattooed multi-millionaire lumbering Italian center-forward. A kind of Christian Vieri-style figure, nothing to prove any more, but still stumbling around from Turkish league to the Denver Chicken Bucket to some mid-to-lower tier Premier League club picking up an endless final lap of honor pay day.

Which brings The Mill to news in this morning’s Daily Mirror that Luca Toni is threatening to “go on strike” at Bayern Munich unless he’s allowed to make a series of unconvincing appearances for West Ham, buy a nice flat in the docklands, injure his ankle or his calf or his earlobe, disappear completely for about six months and then jet off to Al Baargh of Qatar with an enormous severance cheque. “The trainer told me I should play for the reserves and get the chance to play 90 minutes. But I don’t think that is a good idea,” Toni said from his sofa yesterday, making a “what-ever”-style gesture and opening another packet of Pringles.

Leeds want to swap Chris Taylor for Oldham’s Alan Sheehan. Manchester United and Liverpool are “battling it out” to sign inevitably disappointing and fitful Real Sociedad “wonderkid” Antoine Griezmann, who sounds like the kind of surly, white-coated designer-stubbled man who might turn up on Saturday Kitchen making a soufflé in an atmosphere of forced and empty bonhomie that ends with everyone grinning glassily at the camera and saying “Antoine. Absolutely delicious. Now…”

In the Mail, Phil Brown thinks it’s a good idea to sign Sol Campbell in January, but only if he can “beat off” some invented “interest” from Genoa, Sampdoria, someone in the middle east, The Brisbane Flip-Flops and a crushing sense of overwhelming and deathly futility. And for some reason Big Phil “Luiz Felipe” Scolari says Zico stopped him signing Yuri Zhirkov for Chelsea, which sounds like a good idea for a radio panel game show called I’m Sorry Zico Stopped Me Doing It, hosted by Jack Dee or Stephen Fry. Zico once stopped The Mill getting to a wedding in Sussex on time, by accidentally filling up the Mill’s Austin Maestro with diesel rather than two-stroke when we stopped at the BP garage just outside Horsham. Beeeep. Sinitta? Yes, it’s a Zico Bluff. Five points.

In The Sun, Phil Brown has attempted to turn things around by taking his players for a walk on the Humber Bridge. He’s also defended giving Liam Cooper a nightmare debut marking Fernando Torres. “”It was a Catch 22 situation. If you’d asked him whether he wanted his debut at Anfield, he would have said ‘Yes’,” Brown explained, furiously scribbling over the text of his copy of Joseph Heller’s classic novel of war-time absurdity and re-writing the entire 454 pages into the moving tale of an 18-year-old defender being humiliated by a world class centre forward for no apparent reason.

According to Goal.com Spurs are snuffling around after Bordeaux winger Geraldo Wendel. “”I’m glad to have clubs like these who are interested in my football,” the Brazilian announced, gazing at his very interesting football. And Curtis Davies could leave Aston Villa in January in a tiff over not quite having played enough games to be given the huge sack full of gemstones, parmesan cheese and £2 coins stipulated in his contract, but wanting it anyway despite having spent most of the last year in a bath chair smoking a pipe.

Reference: http://www.buzzle.com

Dave Cameron’s Etonian Cabal – My Hot Tip for the 2010 at Westminster

Usually it is the Conservative Party conference that is profoundly depressing (and to be the fair to the bastards, I am sure they won’t disappoint this week as they prepare for power by taking it in turns to smug up to the lectern and denounce as demented anyone who has the temerity to call for a small windfall levy on those whose properties have risen from £300,000 to an easy million and in the process earned their owners, tax free, as much as a teacher or nurse might make in a career). But even so it will struggle to be more deflationary than Labour’s effort in Brighton which, with Peter “Suits you, sir” Mandelson as camp impresario, was an end-of-the-pier show to end end-of-the-pier shows.

The polls and the odds don’t lie: the Tories are back and this time they’re Etonians. The only question to be resolved is which sport they will choose to adopt. For the past decade there was a symmetry between New labor and New Football as both attempted to combine traditionalist supporters loyal to their roots with swing voters attracted to the glitz. It was pork pies and prawn sandwiches. Little wonder it sometimes felt queasy.

Now it is the Tories’ turn. Cameron and Osborne can hardly do football. The leader-in-waiting’s support for Aston Villa is as convincing as Prince William’s (a fellow alumnus, which means that should the Queen and Prince Charles simultaneously fall under a bus the monarch, the prime minister and the mayor of London would all be Old Etonians). As for Osborne, the nearest one can envisage him to being at a football match is scalping tickets for it outside the stadium.

Nor can the political Ant and Dec really do rugby or cricket. The former because it sends out the wrong message, the latter because it is very hard to wing a love of cricket (those that don’t know cricket, will not cricket know). Moving down the list, there’s motor racing, but that brings Bernie Ecclestone into the equation and, God forbid, maybe Jeremy Clarkson into the cabinet as car czar. Then there’s tennis, but cuddling up to Andy Murray doesn’t immediately appeal as a vote winner. And after that there’s horse racing. This, I think, would be quite clever. There would be something refreshing about an incoming prime minister ending his induction speech with a “keep it under your hat, but I don’t half fancy Alfred Nobel for Saturday’s Guineas”. However, being a pair of spivs, the last thing Osborne and Cameron will want to be seen as is at all spivvy. Which leaves swimming …

Or, I’m afraid, football. And if England win the World Cup next year (which they won’t because one player, almost certainly at the quarter-final stage, will do something stupid and the rest of his team-mates will not possess the collective wit to stage a recovery) the first man to the microphone will be Dave, hailing: “Johnny Terry and his boys for proving Britain can be Great with the right manager and the right prime minister …”

That’ll put a dampener on things.

Reference: http://www.buzzle.com/