Football transfer rumours: David Villa to Chelsea ... again?

Look at his face. Just look at his face. While the temptation to forego a round-up of the day's tabloid tittle-tattle in favour of a good old fashioned caption competition instead (the winning entrant will be chosen at 2.30pm and receive their choice of - Rumour Mill writer scans desk for free tat to give away - In The Shadow Of A Giant: The Autobiography of Arsenal and Wales Legend Mel Charles or Nobody Beats Us: The Inside Story of the 1970s Wales Rugby Team or a partially chewed blue biro missing its lid or the apparently discarded bicycle helmet of the Rumour Mill's colleague Mikey Stafford*), it would be a gross dereliction of journalistic duty not to list the contenders queuing up to plant their rumps in the managerial hotseat at Anfield: Jose Mourinho.

Yes, yes, it's well documented that Waldorf and Statler can't afford to sack Rafa Benitez and the Rumour Mill doesn't want to see any man lose his job in these difficult times, but in the wake of Saturday's comedy of errors at Craven Cottage and the run up to Wednesday's humiliation at the Stade Gerland, it's becoming increasingly apparent that Liverpool's American owners can't afford not to sack him, even though such a move could well ruin the fun for those of us sitting by the guillotine with knitting in hand, waiting to see exactly how much gas there is in this particular explosion/mixed metaphor. Whatever about finishing in the top four come season's end, at the rate they're shipping goals, players and points, Liverpool will be lucky to finish in the top 10 of the Premier League this season.

As you'd expect on a Monday morning following one of the more fascinating weekends in recent Premier League history, tabloid transfer tell-all is fairly thin on the ground, what with the papers devoting the lion's share of their column inchage to match reports, thundering opinion pieces and The X Factor. That said, the Mirror has made room for the obligatory whispers linking Valencia striker David Villa with a £33m move to Chelsea, a football club that is not prepared to let the small matter of a transfer ban curtail their spending on new talent during the January transfer window. While the Mirror reports that Villa would rather go to Manchester United and rejected Chelsea's advances during the summer, the Rumour Mill has it on good authority that he's quite the homebird and has no desire whatsoever to leave his nearest and dearest in Spain for a cold, wet, foreign country where he can't speak the lingo.

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