January 27 2005

Premiership

Welcome to this week's transfer window update, extended to co-incide with the end of January, by Simon Pophale.

This week's edition could be called, "Drama on the high seas" or possibly more accurately, "Mutiny on the Pompey". Central to this is the role of Captain H Redknapp, who leads a mutiny on the South Coast by jumping ship, then going back to plunder the booty of his former charges.

This week saw him take Nigel Quashie for £2.1million on Monday 17 and is rumoured to be wanting Ricardo Fuller, if Portsmouth manage to find a suitable replacement. Meanwhile, they will also have to look for a replacement for Amdy Faye, who is set to join Newcastle.

The deal appears to have been agreed in priniciple on Jan 25th, which leaves Pompey desperately short of players. The good ship Southampton, under Redknapp, maybe on a resurgent mission to the calmer waters of Premiership safety, let's hope not.

Southampton's latest victims of the "Redknapp effect" were Liverpool and they made the next transfer deal on Tuesday 18th, letting Salif Diao move to Birmingham on loan for the rest of the season. Diao, who has hardly featured at Liverpool since the departure of former boss Gerard Houiller, goes to fill the void left by Robbie Savage, whose acrimonious move to Blackburn was completed on Wednesday.

For a cool 3 million, Savage possibly has left under a huge cloud but now reunites with his former International manager, Mark Hughes at Ewood Park.

The rest of the deals all involved fringe or youth players, with only one notable transfer which caught the eye was that of Scott Carson, who moved from Leeds United to Liverpool on Friday.

The figure which was undisclosed is rumoured to be around the 750,000 pound mark, which saw reserve goalkeeper Paul Harrison move the other way. The must be something in the water at Leeds, with notable keepers like Paul Robinson also coming through the ranks at Elland Road.

The other deals,all loans saw former Man Utd Trainees Mark Wilson, now at Middlesborough, move to Livingston and the aptly named (for us at any rate) Chris Eagles move to Watford, continuing the United - Watford link-ups of previous seasons.

Robert Watkins and Adam Green went from Fulham to Crawley Town and Sheffield Wednesday respectively. Harry Redknapp continued the wheeling and dealing by sending out Alaeddine Yahia to St Etienne and Jordan Fowler went from Arsenal to Chesterfield.

As the last week approches, there is still no Palace news. Wayne Routledge is still with us after turning in a decent performance against Spurs, saw the North London outfit made an improved, but still lowly bid for his services. Rumour is that Aston Villa are now interested.

Dmitri Bulykin is down at Pompey, who are now interested in bagging him should Ricardo Fuller move to Southampton. Never mind, still with less than a week to go it will be interesting to see the final transfer scramble come Monday night, who moves where. There could be yet a real surprise in the offing!