As the opening of the transfer window draws closer, the number of absurd rumours you’ll read about in the press will grow and grow.
Fans FC is a remarkably poor website (perhaps on a par with our previous winners Tribal Football). Throw together some generic post-match comments from Roy Hodgson about our inability to penetrate Stoke’s defence successfully yesterday and one once-impressive Championship striker and what do you get? Apparently, we’re going to bid £2m for Leroy Lita.
When Lita was scoring goals for fun in Reading’s debut Premier League season this might have been plausible. Now, it seems very odd. We’ve already spent the best part of £17m on two new strikers and have Erik Nevland in reserve with Diomansy Kamara to come back from injury. And that’s before you can consider the calibre of the supposed signing. Lita is a decent goalpoacher, that you can’t deny, but Norwich are battling against relegation from the Championship. He’s hardly the next Thierry Henry.
The Mirror seems to think we are going to move again for Croatian goalkeeper Stipe Pletikosa. He nearly joined us a couple of years ago and on the basis of some vague quotes from the big man the paper reckons we’re going to make a move. Did they miss the fact that we signed three goalkeepers in the close season? Why’s an international goalkeeper with one of the top national teams in Europe going to swap clubs to sit on the bench? This seems like a lazy hack rehashing an old non-story. Could do better.
Toss in a couple more unsubstantiated stories about our ‘star’ players and we’re all done. If you didn’t know already, Liverpool have joined the race for Brede Hangeland. Apparently, our giant defender has stalled on discussing a new contract because of interest from Tottenham and Arsenal. Oh, and Jimmy Bullard will be joining Newcastle. Because he’d really swap London for the north east when he specifically stated one of the reasons he moved back to the capital in the first place was to be near his family. Have you not seen the Premier League table?
That Lita rumour made me laugh. The link says he’s been in fine form for Norwich of late. Well, he wasn’t blindingly hot in the game against Ipswich and why would we dive into the Championship to find a top quality Premier League performer? Surely we’d have learned our lesson from the Sanchez era by now?
I wouldn’t be as quick as you to dismiss the Pletikosa rumour. He’s a really good goalkeeper – remember him playing for Hajduk Split against us during our UEFA Cup run – and would be an excellent signing. I guess the question is, as you point out, would he be willing to be a number two?
Yeah, Fans FC is real class. I love the way the title says we’re in for 2mil and then the text of the article says 3mil. Stories for this website are dreamt up while the editor sits on the karzy…
You know I didn’t even notice that. I make you right, though, that website is absolutely toilet.