Drat. It may even be a double drat.
The Mill awoke this morning and hatched a plan unparalleled in its sheer cunning. A plan that relied on white-coated boffins at Cern's Large Hadron Collider blowing the doors off the entire planet at 8.30am in an attempt to recreate the Big Bang.
Given that the Mill rarely delivers its daily drivel before 9am and that it would be rendered obsolete by the ending of the world, the Mill flipped over its slobber-stained pillow and returned to its dream (starring a Space Hopper, a shoe-horn, some lard and the twins from Pat Sharpe's Fun House) safe in the knowledge that Doomsday is definitely a Duvet Day.
Alas, at 8.31am, the Mill was dragged out of bed by its muzzle. The plan hadn't been as cunning as first thought, the world was still turning and, so too, was the daily grind of meaningless, unsubstantiated and downright inane speculation about what may or may not happen in the world of football. Bah!
So, while scientists are creating 800,000,000 particle collisions per second at 99.9999991 per cent of the speed of light in a quest to discover how existence began 13.7 billion years ago, the Mill can reveal that Jobi McAnuff is leaving Watford for Crystal Palace.
At Newcastle, a club that continues to baffle boffins and the laws of logic, Didier Deschamps has thrown his beret into the ring for the manager's job and so too has Marcelino Toral of Real Mallorca. It's not a beret though, it's one of those black hats that Spanish bullfighters wear that look a bit like a Cornish pasty.
Other rumours to rock the cosmos include Nigel Quashie's trial at Birmingham, Middlesbrough's Adam Johnson interesting Ipswich, Emmanuel Adebayor refusing to get on a plane to Zambia and the revelation that Dimitar Berbatov carries a Bible around with him. Apparently "there are many good pieces of advice for those like me in the Bible" – which is good news for the covet-fearing Ox that lives in Alderley Edge.
Fearful that his 2,308 houses may be robbed while he's there, Robbie Fowler is snubbing a move to Norway in favour of staying at Blackburn who, incidentally, are giving a trial to Phillippe Christanval – a defender whose star performances in Championship Manager bore little resemblance to his shambolic ones while at Fulham.
Portsmouth are scampering after Ghana's Stephen Appiah, Manchester United and Chelsea are after 16-year-old Danish starlet Nicolas Boilsen and Watford's Mart Poom is being sent to Coventry.
Even with a time machine, that's five minutes of your life you'll never get back.
· Feel free to add your own rumours and speculation below. Why not make something up? There's nothing much else going on.
