Transfer Rumour Round-up

One disadvantage of living in Australia is the lack of news coverage for the English Premier League (which is understandable, with it being English and all), so unless you trawl the web it is very difficult to keep up with the transfer news.

With Manchester City having as much cash as they do, there is certainly a hell of a lot transfer speculation (but of course hardly any news). Which is definitely a change from the days of trying — unsuccessfully — to sign Mido or Steed Malbranque.

A quick whip around the grounds suggests that we are looking to bring in the following players:

• Carlos Tevez still looks the most likely, with the Rags apparently unwilling to pay the £26million to secure a full-time deal. Although, there are some doubts about this deal now with the transfer of Tranny to Real Madrid giving Fergie a transfer kitty of up to £80million. It looks like the loan deal expires at the end of this month, so we may not know for sure either way until then.
  
• Samuel Eto'o is another name that won't go away, but it has been reported we are baulking at his wage demands (£200,000 a week if you don't mind). It is also alleged that the success of the this deal is dependent on whether or not we sign Tevez.
  
• We are also apparently in advanced talks with the likes of Roque Santa Cruz from Blackburn, Joleon Lescott from Everton, and Peter Crouch and Glen Johnson from Portsmouth. The Santa Cruz deal looks to be the most likely from these names.
  

Players set to leave the club, include:

• Elano. By far the most unsettled player at the club, there have been murmurs about an exit for the Brazilian for almost a year now, with Inter a likely destination. Would be a real shame to lose someone of his quality, but it is difficult to slot him into our system with Ireland and Robinho, as well as attempting to keep his massive ego in check.
• The talk around Daniel Sturridge has gone suspiciously quiet the last couple of weeks, he was reportedly close to a move to Chelsea a few weeks ago. However, nothing more has come of it.
  
• The contracts of Darius Vassell, Michael Ball, Danny Mills, Dietmar Hamann and (unfortunately) Glauber Berti expire and will not be renewed.
• The future of contracted players on the outer such as Jo, Joe Hart, Michael Johnson (who?), and Chad Evans are unclear.
  

So there it is, for all the talk about how many players we were going to sign and how our summer spending was going to ruin football, we have so far only wrapped up the signature of Gareth Barry. There are still over two months left in the window, so there is absolutely no need for concern — especially as no other Premier League club has made any transfers of consequence. You'll just have to wait a bit longer before buying your Carlos Tevez kit...