LAST night Ken Early called from Dublin to ask if I would do Newstalk 106 at 9.45 pm, talking about Thierry Henry and Ryan Babel.
So I said OK and Ken said he would email me some material about Scandinavian footballers, notably from a book with Henning Berg, the Blackburn and Manchester United defender.
Newstalk called back at 9.45 and I went on air and said, "Exciting news since I last talked to you – a world exclusive -"
Pause for effect.
"Go on then !"
"Arsene Wenger is in Paris negotiating the sale of Thierry Henry to Barcelona."
We talked about Henry, Samuel Eto'o and Babel for ten minutes and then the show, Off The Ball, ended.
We knew this story would be in the papers today.
More details will be forthcoming later, we imagine.
Wenger wants £20 million and Barca have offered £15 million.
He is negotiating with director Ferran Soriano, a guy I met when he did a presentation about FCB and the finances of Europe's biggest football clubs at Birkbeck School of Management. Soriano is a big, smooth, diplomatic middle class guy who will get on well with Wenger.They'll be on the same wavelength, I think. They must have met before this week.
Clearly, I have plenty to say about this topic. But I can't do it right now. Interestingly, BBC Breakfast and Sky Sports News didn't seem to cover the story this morning.
I've put Ken Early's Scandinavian material in a file and it's 99 pages. This stuff has never been published in the UK but someone over there has translated the most interesting chapters.
This morning I've read the first 60 pages and it's the most interesting fooball material I've seen in years, partly because of the way the book is written. The author goes around with Henning Berg, meets the people in his life, Kenny Dalglish, the Manchester United WAGs, the salesman who sold him his first car, agent Rune Hauge, Morten Gamst Pedersen, and so on.
It's 50 times more revealing than most of the junk we read. I was laughing my head off.
If I can use some of it on ANR, I will.
I'll ask Ken.