Its the height of the Silly Season.
The options...
The Inter Toto Cup or watching Chelsea and Manchester United annihilate teams from economically disenfranchised regions - Sky tried to excite us about the breaking news that Derby County only managed a victory at Mansfield Town due to a last minute penalty save by Roy Carroll.
When reality is like this, a spectacular brand requires a spectacular hyperreality.
And the summer transfer market is that hyperreality...
Many leading agents regard their ties to the leading mainstream journalists as THE critical tool to lever suitable transfers and, with it, suitable percentages of the deal.
The result for the reader who buys into this rubbish, is a cascade of fallacious storylines and articles describing this-or-that clubs interest in such-and-such a player.
When, in fact, no such interest exists.
In a highly manipulated media, it is an interesting reversal that the transfer sagas that are, in fact, real achieve far less media space (as the last thing an agent requires when a suitable deal is in motion is for external influences to potentially destabilise the revenue stream).
As Noam Chomsky says: "History and reality are too dangerous".
In the instance of the Silly Season transfer rumours, this is undoubtedly the case.
Below we itemise the top transfer rumours of Silly Season 2008.
We also, for good measure, have a laugh at the expense of the more dysfunctional teams in the English Premiership.
And, we assess some of the transfer activity to date.
* Michael Owen - Linked with JEF Chiba in Japan and Manchester United, Owen has been granted outrageous media exposure in that he might ply his irregular trade elsewhere.
For a player who seemingly only scores for his club when his profitable international team place is under threat, Owen must be regarded as valueless. In fact, we believe that he should be paying £100,000 per week to a club so that he can adjust match results to his heart's content. Owen believes that he deserves to be paid an equivalent amount - he bases this nonsense plea on 10 goals in 19 games at the end of last season, when Newcastle were receiving much official help in their efforts to remain in the Premiership.
'History' and 'reality' are more realistic ways to assess a player's true value.
And, utilising the data to date in his career, we reckon Owen should be shelling out approximately £9 million per year (in transfer fees and wages to the club) in order to play.
Owen is now threatening to walk out on a free. We'll leave it to you to do the mathematics of this from Newcastle's perspective - there's some interesting gaming of that particular transfer market available to the participants!
Owen is unable to feature in Newcastle's pre-season losses to small northern towns as he is behind in his pre-season training due to his originally publicised football injury morphing into mumps.
Injury? Mumps? Walking out? Manchester United? JEF Chiba?
Its all marketed trash.
You should not care.
Oh my gosh, I should not care...
No player wants to see wage freezes/decreases at Newcastle.
Nobody wants to join Newcastle.
There may be trouble ahead...
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© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
