The Mill doesn't really know about noisy neighbours. We're of no fixed abode for a start, slithering from under a different rock each morning with a fresh tidbit about Nyron Nosworthy's contract negotiations. Besides, our hearing has never been the same since some toerag convinced us there was a G-spot in the right ear and we got a bit too zesty with a Johnson's cotton bud one hazy night.
Despite all that, even we can discern that there's going to be a fair bit of noise in Manchester this summer – particularly if, as today's Daily Mail suggests, City sign United's European conqueror Ivica Olić. Now Olić is a very decent player, but this has the whiff of sheer pettiness, a tactic of which the Mill wholeheartedly approves.
City also want Benfica's Argentine left-winger Angel Di Maria. Just like they did yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that. Manchester United want Di Maria too, but they don't have a thing to thingy in so, according to the Daily Mirror, they reckon Di Maria might be too lightweight for the Premier League. Unlike the 4ft2ins, seven-stone-wet-through Javier Hernández, who they provisionally signed yesterday.
One player City won't be signing is former Arsenal enforcer Mathieu Flamini. He is happy sat on a Milanese bench. In fact he loves it, but only because of a little-known apparition last November, during which he was told that what he was doing was really profound and Gallic and existential and deep and if he stayed in Milan for two years somebody would commission Flamini: a 21st Century Portrait of a Man Who Does Bugger All, with an acapella soundtrack from Jónsi and a cameo from that bloke who calls Clarence Seedorf Willy Wonka.
Sunderland and Newcastle want to sign Birmingham's Sebastian "Seb" Larsson. Is that news?
Tottenham will introduce a new geriatrico policy by signing Real Madrid's Guti, aged 5,413,190, on a free transfer this summer, shortly followed by Emilio Butragueno, Hugo Sanchez, Raymond Kopa and that Pavon fella. Rumours that David Bentley will subvert the soooo 20th century greet-the-new-man-by-cutting-a-hole-in-his-socks welcome by putting something special in Guti's hair-gel bottle are unconfirmed, as are rumours that Jermaine Jenas literally hasn't stopped weeping for the last 27 hours upon realising that he is now so anonymous that any old flouncing grandad can get a game ahead of him. He was Young Player of the Year in 2003, you know. Jenas!
Robbie Fowler was Young Player of the Year in 1995 and 1996; quite right too, because he was blessed with a touch of genius. He was also blessed with plenty of dignity, but most of that has subsequently been spunked all round the north west of England and bits of Australia. Fowler is apparently going to join Sydney FC after the final collapse of his North Queensland Fury. Fowler is 35 today. It wasn't supposed to be like this, was it?
