By Myles Palmer
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Football fans don’t know what to believe in July.
There is always a barrage of contradictory stories, so it’s all about reading between the lines.
Hacks spend all day on the phone trying to move stories forward by two inches.
And situations change overnight.
All that is fine if you love the minutiae of transfer negotiations.
Personally, I prefer summer.
A party or a barbecue or an outdoor music festival or a game of cricket is what summer is all about.
Or just sitting on my patio on a warm evening, enjoying a James Lee Burke detective novel.
WILL BAPTISTA stay at Seville for another year?
Do Arsenal want to sell Vieira ?
When will there be some transfers worth talking about ?
ARSENE RECKONS his phone will get hot this week.
His latest quotes spell out his present position.
Arsene talks about managers taking their places in the starting blocks for a race that will kick off soon.
“I like Wright-Phillips very much but we are in a transfer market where you first have to let Chelsea make decisions and then come in when they have made that decision,” he said.
“That is because there is a price for Chelsea and a price for everybody else and that is why we have to wait until they make a decision.
“It is very frustrating but it is a fact.
“I don’t know what their budget is but they were in for Steven Gerrard but didn’t get him so they have to go somewhere else.”
“The transfer market is very quiet. It has been much quieter than expected and it looks like it has not really started, with no activity in the lower clubs and very little with the clubs that are supposed to have money.
“At the moment, it looks like everybody is in the starting blocks, and with the heat of my phone, it looks like it will start soon.”
I hope Arsene is right.
I hope it starts soon.
July 11th 2005
PS
James Lee Burke writes novels featuring Dave Robicheaux, a cop in Luisiana.
America’s fictional detectives are supposed to go down those mean streets, but not be mean themselves.
Dave is tough, but gets badly beaten early in Jolie Blon’s Bounce.
He wakes up in hospital.
“The sunrise in the morning was pink and misty, like the colours and textures inside a morphine dream, and through the window at Iberia General I could see palm trees and oaks hung with moss along the Old Spanish Trail and a white crane lifting on extended wings off the surface of the bayou.”