Tongue Firmly in Cheek.

Football
transfer rumours: Dimitar Berbatov heading back to Spurs?

Today's nudge-nudgery
knows that if a tree falls in the wood and is not on Facebook, it still
exists

Paul Doyle

• 
  guardian.co.uk,
  Wednesday 26 May 2010 08.47 BST
  
• Article
  

Is Dimitar Berbatov going to rejoin
Tottenham? Photograph: Martin Rickett/PA



An honest-to-goodness scamp from the east end of London awoke this
morning, pulled on his immaculate school uniform (which, as he
continually reminded his parents, neighbours, relations, pets, teachers,
any passers-by who cared to listen and several who'd rather not, was in
a horrid state when he'd inherited it from his oddball foreign cousin
less than two years ago) and dashed off to class. It wasn't that li'l
'Arry Redknapp loved his lessons, of course, simply that he couldn't
wait to see his chums and start swapping Panini football stickers to
complete his album, or rather, to feed his habit, because li'l 'Arry's
album could never be complete no matter what he said in the playground.Upon
his arrival he earnestly insisted that all he wanted was a Micah
Richards but then remembered he also quite fancied a Ryan
Shawcross. But then the cantankerous purple exchange student
from Scotland, who was still seething at having been usurped as the
school bully, stomped over and demanded to know what it would take for
li'l 'Arry to trade his Luka Modric. Li'l 'Arry's li'l
face lit up – this was an opportunity to be cherished, a chance
to launch into some of the most memorable wheeling-and-dealing of his
career – and so with barely suppressed excitement he told the angry
Glaswegian that he could have Modric in return for that slightly faded Dimitar
Berbatov, Jonny Evans and a whole load of
lunch money.He even offered to throw a Robbie
Keane in as a goodwill gesture, but wee Martin O'Neill
overheard that and said he'd take that in return for a Curtis Davies. Truly,
l'il 'Arry was in his element! And to top it all off, a guy in a
Lokomotiv Moscow T-shirt came and offered to swap £8m and the Nigeria
striker Peter Odemwingie for the Roman
Pavlyuchenko that l'il 'Arry had never really liked for no good
reason.Meanwhile, up the road, snooty Arsène Wenger was
stubbornly holding on to his most prized sticker, even though the
sticker's dad said it didn't want to stick around any more and is ready
to scarper. Funny thing was, reasonable, though not perfect,
replacements for his Cesc Fábregas could be had but
Wenger was so determined to part with his shiny Spaniard that he seemed
prepared to let Ferguson take Modric and perhaps also Real Madrid's Rafael
van der Vaart, Manchester City and Aston Villa duke it out for
Mikel Arteta and the ubiquitous li'l 'Arry lay claim
to Stephen Ireland. Wenger had to content himself with
pondering over a move for the Senegalese defender Pape Diakhate from
Dynamo Kyiv or a Danish stopper, Simon Kjaer, from Palermo.Carlo
Ancelotti, meanwhile, was watching Newcastle, Everton, Liverpool and,
of course, li'l 'Arry haggle over Joe Cole, while he
himself hatched a plan to convince Rafael Benítez to part with his
cherished Fernando Torres as well as his quite
neglected Yossi Benayoun. Then Ancelotti could show off
by jetting to Marseille to pick up a Charles Kabore of
Burkina Faso, no less.With no money for new stickers, all
Portsmouth could think about was a new manager. They quite liked the
former Reading and Watford man Brendan Rodgers but were more than likely
to plump for Steve Cotterrill instead, on the basis that he looks a lot
like Frank Spencer and that seemed appropriate for Pompey.Away
from the playground, both Scott Parker and Emile
Heskey are about to be catapulted into the sky as to better
enable Stoke and Blackburn to compete for them. Aston Villa want Parker
too, but don't suggest they like it in the air or O'Neill will get very
irate indeed. As Arsène, as they say, knows.