Football transfer rumours: Kasper Schmeichel to Bayern Munich?

Today’s flim-flam wants to be elected

A shocking bold-type confession in this morning’s Sun: “FERGIE: I WANT TO BED CHERYL”.

The Mill had to take quite a long breath after reading this. What to make of it? The ultimate statement of enduring longevity, perhaps. Retiring? How’s this for retiring? And while you’re at it check out my florid, hoarsely-panting 68-year-old leaked inter-generational celebrity sex tape. Maybe it’s a simple statement of fact, a knightly tribute to the nation’s favourite doll. Or more likely desperate next-generation mind games ahead of the final round of Premier League matches, some kind of crazed mess-with-Ashley’s-head gambit.

Although, to be honest the Sun does seem to be a bit confused itself. “BLACK EYED PEAS star FERGIE has told pal WILL.I.AM that SHE will bed CHERYL COLE before he does,” it goes on to say. “Bisexual Fergie, 35, has been teasing her bandmate about his huge crush on the GIRLS ALOUD star.”

Will.I.Am. Bisexual Fergie. The Mill has gone a little blank to be honest, and it’s probably all for the best. Particularly when there’s news in the Daily Mirror that Arsène Wenger is about to pay £10m for Dynamo Kyiv’s Pape Malickou Diakhaté, the vice-captain of Senegal and fancy-sounding defender who “also plays in midfield”, which already sounds slightly too poncy and Arsenal. Bone-headed big-money disappointment William Gallas could be flouncing off elsewhere after being offered only a one-year deal. He says Roma, Paris St Germain and Juventus are all prepared to give him two years.

Sam Allardyce is in a hoarse and fetid funk over Cardiff City’s Welsh international Joe Ledley, who is available “on the cheap this summer”. Birmingham and Bolton are both after the scuttling cross-patch bald full-back Paul Konchesky. And the spotless courtly gent Roy Hodgson, who would never even think of doing that to Cheryl, has Nicky Shorey up his sleeve.

In the Daily Mail Bayern Munich want to pay £7m for the scurrying Manchester United wing, strike defensive attacking midfield indie guitarist Park Ji-sung. Sir Alex Ferguson says he needs two players. He may be getting rid of ambling tearful goal-scapegoat Dimitar Berbatov, indolent Glenn Hoddle-lite Michael Carrick, juddering, creaking, back-firing defensive Rolls Royce Rio Ferdinand and apparently want-away ace grappler Nemanja Vidic.

Rafael Benítez is all set once again to hold more “crunch talks”, the latest in an endless round of crunch talks for a man whose life consists of little else but crunch talking, with this new fellow Martin Broughton. If Chelsea buy Fernando Torres for £70m Benítez wants to be allowed to waste every penny on disappointing Chilean left-backs, skinny Frenchmen who play in the reserves for six years and angry-looking but basically pointless ageing European defenders.

West Ham are after the 17-year-old Shrewsbury “wonderkid” Tom Bradshaw, who has scored three goals, which is enough, apparently, to qualify for wonderkid status. Chelsea have smeared their face with rabbit dung, packed a small Tupperware box with peanut butter sandwiches, put on their taupe combat-style outdoor trousers and begun “tracking” holding midfielder Fabian Rinaudo of Gimnasia La Plata. Rinaudo has been likened to Javier Mascherano and is described as “a 5ft 8in terrier”.

Back in the Sun Benítez may not actually be going to Juventus, who aren’t offering him enough “power”. Nicolas Anelka is going to sign a new two-year deal at Chelsea. “It’s 99.5% done,” says an insider, holding up 99.5 fingers.

Wolves want to buy the Crystal Palace midfield goal machine Darren Ambrose. The sum of £1.5m should do it. Kasper Schmeichel is “eyeing a deal” with Bayern Munich. Bayern have offered him a contract. He is eyeing it. Birmingham, West Brom and Derby are also politely interested.

According to Goal.com Thiago Silva’s agent says he’s unlikely to go to Chelsea. “Thiago Silva is very happy at Milan and he wants to honour his contract. I know nothing because if there was a team interested in Thiago they should contact Milan, I am just his agent,” Paulo Fernando Tonietto said, adopting a sickly and humble facial expression and trying to make himself look, really, really, really small, like a tiny defenceless hedgehog, or a little mouse with three legs.

Strolling, muscle-bound, almost entirely inflexible slowcoach Michael Ballack could be off to Schalke. “We are indeed interested in signing Michael Ballack. I’m confident that he’s ready to accept a pay cut if he decides to return to the Bundesliga this summer,” Felix Magath told the Berliner Kurier, which sounds a bit like one of those newspapers sulky hooded teenage boys tip in vast quantities every week over the side of railway embankments before shamelessly ambling back to the shop to claim their £12.52, which they will then spend on individual cigarettes and a selection of energy drink shots.

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Five things we learned from the Premier League this weekend | John Ashdown

West Ham attempt to arrest their decline, Chelsea end their bad moment and Arsène Wenger goes postal

When the going gets tough, take a few days off

All managers have different ways of dealing with pressure. With Sheffield United facing a vital fixture at Doncaster this month, for example, the Blades manager Kevin Blackwell sat the players down to watch Ken Loach’s Kes in an attempt to lift the mood of his players. Eschewing gritty northern cinema and falconry, Gianfranco Zola has given his West Ham squad three days off following their defeat to Stoke at Upton Park, and taken himself off to the bolt hole of Sardinia.

West Ham’s co-owner David Sullivan said the break was to allow the players to “freshen up for the Everton game”, though the danger is that they will spend their time stewing over a run of six successive league defeats that has thrust the Hammers into the relegation maelstrom. Rather than clearing their collective heads of the stresses and strains at the bottom of the Premier League, the squad could also find themselves contemplating an uncertain future under a new manager should Zola, as many expect, decide to walk away from Upton Park.

Arsène Wenger shouldn’t swear

Mick McCarthy can eff and blind as much as he likes (and he does – in pretty much every press conference he ever gives). It suits. It makes sense. There’s something cosy and familiar about it, like a much loved pair of slippers or a favourite chair. Hearing the Wolves manager drop in a couple of bollocks or bastards is a reassuring sound, one that reminds us that some things in the world remain constant.

The same cannot be said for Arsène Wenger. The knowledge that the exasperated Arsenal manager answered questions about Birmingham’s tackling at St Andrew’s on Saturday with “Leave me alone with that, for fuck’s sake” jars horribly. Try hearing it in your head – it’s almost impossible. You end up with the computer voice from Microsoft Word, designed to help the visually impaired but much-beloved of 12-year-old boys in school IT lessons for whom hearing a tinny “You r gay” from a machine is the height of comedy.

Wenger is supposed to reside at the urbane end of the football manager spectrum, forays into the realms of spit and sawdust shouldn’t be allowed. It’s disconcerting. It’s unsettling. It’s downright weird. It’s like coming home to those slippers and chair to find they’re actually a pair of Doc Martens and an inflatable Guinness sofa. But let’s not kid ourselves, like some have over the weekend, that it’s a sign of an impending title-race meltdown Wenger’s team. The real sign of that at St Andrew’s was wearing gloves and the No1 shirt.

The sublime is better than the ridiculous

Of Fernando Torres’s two goals for Liverpool yesterday, which is your favourite? That first thunderbolt from the edge of the area, a goal so ridiculously good that at first sight it seemed the Spaniard could not possibly have meant it? Or the second, sublime, ice-in-the-veins finish that made it 3-0?

I’m sure I’m not the only one to prefer the second. Torres himself seems to have a soft spot for it. “I don’t think [the first goal] is the best I’ve scored,” said the Spain striker. “Good yes, but I think I’ve scored better, and I hope there are even better to come. The second goal was nice because the defender was coming across and [Craig] Gordon was too high. I had no chance to score and to wait was the only way.”

Chelsea are well and truly over their ‘bad moment’

It’s 47 years since a top-flight side in England scored a century of league goals in a season. With six games to play Chelsea are now 18 goals short of the mark last reached by Tottenham in 1962-63. Carlo Ancelotti’s side took the breath away against Aston Villa, hammering the seven nails into the coffin of the Villans’ Champions League hopes.

Less than a fortnight has passed since Chelsea looked anything but breathtaking in European defeat to José Mourinho’s Internazionale, a result that, when followed up with a dispiriting draw at Blackburn, suggested that Chelsea’s season was in danger of unravelling. A thumping win at Portsmouth followed but that was not enough for Ancelotti, who, ahead of Saturday’s fixture, said he wanted “to know that our bad moment is finished”. There’s not much doubt about that now.

Attempts to curb fan violence are not working

The scenes at Upton Park when Millwall visited in the Carling Cup earlier this season were some of the ugliest at a top-flight British football ground for a long time. Hundreds of fans were involved in what the police later described as “large-scale trouble”. There were pitch invasions, there were bricks and bottles thrown. A fan was stabbed outside the ground. The result? A £115,000 fine for the Hammers, while Millwall were cleared of three charges. As deterrents go it’s up there with pointing a twig at a charging rhino.

Blackburn’s trip to Burnley yesterday brought 40 arrests inside and outside the ground, while coins were apparently thrown at the referee Mike Dean as well as Blackburn’s David Dunn and Chris Samba. “A major policing operation has been in place throughout the day to prevent any disorder,” said Superintendent Terry Woods of Lancashire police. “Unfortunately we have had to deal with some disorder inside and outside the ground. However, the operation that is in place has enabled us to successfully deal with those pockets of disorder rapidly. I would like to point out that the vast majority of fans have behaved appropriately. Unfortunately, a minority have chosen not to behave in the same way.”

It’s a depressingly familiar situation, as miserable as it is unsurprising. Fan violence is a huge and thorny issue, one deserving of greater analysis than a few paragraphs here. But when the penalties for clubs are so light, there is little to deter those who see football as fair excuse for a punch up.

Sheffield UnitedWest Ham UnitedArsenalArsène WengerLiverpoolFernando TorresChelseaBlackburn RoversBurnleyJohn Ashdownguardian.co.uk

Sam Allardyce rekindles row with Rafael Benítez

• Liverpool manager covering-up deficiencies, says Allardyce
• ‘I don’t like him and the feeling is probably mutual’

Sam Allardyce claims Rafa Benítez’s criticism of him is a cover-up for how bad Liverpool are and claims the Reds have all but blown their chance of finishing in the top four.

Benítez last week mocked Allardyce’s behaviour and Blackburn’s style after their match at Anfield, suggesting that the European champions Barcelona were going to model themselves on Rovers: “He is a model for football all around the world. I am sure he is a model for behaviour and for kids all around the world. I am sure Barcelona are thinking of copying this style now too.”

But the Blackburn manager has hit back by claiming he has managed to get under the skin of Benítez and that the Liverpool boss was just covering up for how badly his team played despite the Reds’ 2-1 win.

“It was a good cover-up by Rafa because he knows how bad his side were and that was repeated against Wigan on Monday night,” said Allardyce. “He’s got personal with it for many, many years now. That’s why I don’t like him and the feeling is probably mutual. I don’t get personal with him; I get into him and under his skin, yes, but that’s all part of the game.

“The tit for tat between me and Rafa will probably go on until one of us is no longer a Premier League manager. I’ve managed to psyche out one or two here and there and that’s how the Premier League has evolved over the last 20 years. But no, Pep Guardiola has not been in touch yet.”

He also believes Liverpool’s result at Wigan leaves Benítez’s side unlikely to finish fourth and qualify for the Champions League.

He added: “The last time one of the big four didn’t finish in the top four it was Liverpool – Everton got that spot – and I think this time it looks pretty difficult having lost against Wigan. They are having to rely on other teams slipping up now.

“They have a wealth of experience and that may be a telling factor when the nerve ends start jangling. We saw what happened to Tottenham a few years ago with the famous ‘poisoned lasagne’ scenario – which was obviously never the case – and they let it slip.

“But I think it might be more difficult for Liverpool this time around because there are more teams involved. There’s Manchester City, Aston Villa and Tottenham in there and if Everton keep rolling on you might be surprised to see them making a late run.”

Meanwhile, Vince Grella will miss Blackburn’s match at Tottenham on Saturday due to a calf injury picked up in training but David Dunn is available after coming through a reserve match without any problems.

Sam AllardyceBlackburn RoversRafael BenítezLiverpoolPremier Leagueguardian.co.uk