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Football transfer rumours: Tottenham's Roman Pavlyuchenko
to Liverpool?
By Barry Glendenning
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Is this man going to help Liverpool win the
Europa League? Photograph: Misha Japaridze / AP
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Having missed out on Tottenham Hotspur's Uefa Cup adventures
last season because he was cup-tied from playing in a Champions League
qualifier with Spartak Moscow, Roman Pavlyuchenko could finally get to
realise his boyhood dream of playing in European football's premier second-tier
competition for also-rans and Big Cup losers. The unsettled Russian striker
will move to Anfield in the January transfer window, with chippy Dutchman
Ryan Babel heading in the opposite direction. If nothing else, at least
both players will have a change of scenery and different people to talk
to when they sit on the bench looking sullen with arms folded each Saturday.
Liverpool's full-back Andrea Dossena could also be on the move, what with
Roma being rumoured to be interested in taking the Italian home.
Despite QPR manager Jim Magilton vowing to clear his name and get back
to work as soon as possible in the wake of being suspended yesterday,
a plethora of replacements are already being touted as his possible replacement
at Loftus Road. For an idea of who's in the frame to succeed the Norn
Irishman, imagine gimlet-eyed, beaked and feathered miniature Paul Hart,
Gareth Southgate, Paul Ince and Alan Curbishley heads on cartoon vulture
bodies circling over the club's training ground.
Having cleared out what passed for their crown jewels in a bid to make
ends meet during the summer, Portsmouth may have to flog the red velvet
cushion on which they used to keep them in January, unless they can come
up with £18m in the meantime. The club is in the hole to the tune
of ?60m, a goodly slice of which needs to be paid off by January, which
means, um, star names such as Younes Kaboul, Kevin-Prince Boateng and
senior citizenship's David James will be sold in a bid to keep the wolf
from the Fratton Park door. Tottenham Hotspur manager Harry Redknapp's
interest in James is well documented, while Kaboul and his beautifully
sculpted eyebrows are a £5m target of French sides Lille and
Lyon.
Convalescing after heart surgery he may be, but that hasn't stopped Sam
Allardyce "joining the chase" for the scrawl of past-his-prime
Dutchman Ruud van Nistelrooy, where he will be forced to jockey for position
with Bolton's Gary Megson, Birmingham City's Alex McLeish, Sunderland's
Steve Bruce and Fulham's Roy Hodgson in a contest where first prize is
the opportunity to give an ageing superstar one last lucrative six-month
contract, only to see him fall to the ground clutching his dodgy knee
seconds after inking his £45,000-a-week deal. On the subject
of ageing Dutchmen, goalkeeper Edwin van der Sar has decided that he's
game for another 12 months as a Manchester United player if the club are
happy to have him.
Having lost his strikers Carlton Cole and Zavon Hines to injury and with
his team hovering one place above the relegation zone, West Ham manager
Gianfranco Zola needs the beaming grin for which his name has long been
a byword put back on his chops. Who better to do so, then, than James
Beattie? The Stoke City striker may not score many goals these days, but
he organises good Christmas party and that's the main thing. Stoke will
replace Beattie with Red Bull Salzburg striker Marc Janko, a 6ft 6in Austrian
who scored more than a goal a game in the Austrian league last season,
but whose knowledge of trendy nightspots in London's West End may not
be all it should be.
If you see Steve Bruce out in the woods sniffing tree trunks or hunkering
down, listening intently and touching the ground in front of him, it's
because he's "tracking" Belgium Under-21 goalkeeper Simon Mignolet.
The Sunderland manager also likes the cut of Crystal Palace forward Victor
Moses, but will have to "beat off" competition from Roberto
Martinez, David Moyes and Harry Redknapp in a contest that may or may
not involve a digestive biscuit.
And finally, in one of those catch-all paragraphs we use to tidy up loose
ends when the clock has already ticked past 9am and we're hopelessly behind
schedule, Everton are on the verge of signing Landon Donovan from LA Galaxy
on a slightly less glamourous equivalent of that loan deal that brings
David Beckham to Milan for his now annual winter holiday, while Donovan's
Team America team-mate DaMarcus Beasley will escape Rangers and find sanctuary
in Fulham. Meanwhile in the Championship, Paul Sturrock could find himself
out of a job by close of play today, once Plymouth Argyle board members
meet to discuss his future. His counterpart at Sheffield Wednesday, Brian
Laws, is on slightly safer ground, having been assured his job is secure
until around 4.50pm on Saturday afternoon, when the final whistle is blown
at the end of his side's match against Leicester City.
Guardian.co.uk,
10 December 2009
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