£18M? YOU'RE 'AVING A LARF
There was astonishment today when a quite good club offered to spend quite a lot of money on a quite good player. Consensus was that the mooted £18m they are waving in the direction of Sunderland's bankers in the hope of luring Darren Bent Midlandswards represents "a lot of money for Aston Villa", as if money takes on a different value depending on the identity of the spender. By that logic, it would take Manchester City, say, about £50m to outbid Villa, but both clubs would be emphatically outspent if, say, the Dog & Duck in Wellingborough offered a couple of grand.
As it happens, 18 is an important number for Darren Bent, because it is also - when viewed in a mirror - exactly the number of league goals he has scored since the summer of 2005. Those 81 strikes amount to more Premier League goals than any human on earth except Wayne Rooney and Didier Drogba, who both play for much better teams and are only a single goal better off anyway. Frankly, the statistics are fairly promising - but even if 128 league goals in 261 career starts suggests Villa shouldn't worry too much either way, is Bent really worth £18m? The Fiver investigates.
• James Milner cost Manchester City £24m. Darren Bent is a more effective player than Milner. Bent is cheap.
• Lionel Messi cost Barcelona nothing but a few doctors' bills. Messi is a more effective player than Bent, who will probably cost Aston Villa some doctors' bills too at some point. Bent is expensive.
• You're only as good as the players around you. Bent is more expensive than any other Villa players, yet is only as good as them. Bent is expensive.
• Denilson cost Real Betis £21.5m, and that was in 1998, 13 years of rampant inflation ago. And he was rubbish. Bent is cheap.
• Bent is worth extra money because not only does he score a goal every other game but he is also English, and would therefore qualify as a home-grown player under Uefa regulations. This would be important in the extremely unlikely event of Aston Villa qualifying for European competition (and also signing lots of foreign players, because frankly they've got loads of home-grown talent at the moment). Bent is cheap.
• Kevin Phillips also scores a goal every other game and he is also English, yet in his entire career he has been the subject of a cumulative total of just over £5m in transfer fees. Bent is expensive.
• Bent may very well be good at his job, but will only be asked to perform a maximum of twice a week. A decent toaster is good at its job and may well be used every single day, and you can get one from Argos for about a tenner. Bent is expensive.
The Fiver regrets to inform readers that its in-depth investigation has been inconclusive.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
"The kind of pressure we were under were just long balls into the box really. With [Rio] Ferdinand and [Nemanja] Vidic as your centre-backs you know you can cope with that. They were fantastic." - In lieu of anything else to get excited about, Lord Ferg has praised his defence after Manchester United's passable impression of Manchester City against Tottenham.
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KENNY 2.0
From its position (a) as a leader of the new multi-platform techno-brayeratti; and (b) on its sofa with just a bus-stop-salvage bottle of Frosty Jack's cider-style drink, the Fiver is ideally placed to pick up on the very latest media trends. Recently this has included evidence of fundamental changes in the standard formatting of reality-style TV programmes about grasping people doing up houses while a well-groomed celebrity speculator disapproves in the background.
Previously these tended to be called things like Yuppie Laminate Goldmine or Sloaney Millionaire Flat-Hunt. "In the current market I would value this hastily styled one-bedroom lean-to with decorative wicker whatnot arrangement at £5m." That was their catchphrase. But things are different now and austerity has bitten even here so that instead we now have Penthouse Repossession Nightmares or A Posh Woman Tells You Off In Her Delightful Faux-Victorian Kitchen.
This is the new spirit of making do, a spirit of ration-bookish pins and paste recyclage - and a spirit the Fiver was delighted to see King Kenny Dalglish picking up on only this morning in his debrief from yesterday's corner-turning 2-2 thrashing of Everton.
It turns out Kenny 2.0 is also rebuilding. But he's rebuilding in the modern style, using mainly old stuff he happened to find lying around and that might just look really great nailed above the fireplace where that big yellow stain keeps coming through. Or in Kenny's case real-life underperforming footballers. "We've got a couple of senior players who the supporters haven't exactly seen eye to eye with," a tight-lipped Kenny 2.0 ventriloquised this morning. "We've got to try to rebuild them."
Rebuilding it is then for Kenny 2.0. who in happier times might have simply taken a hired jackhammer to Danish midfield scuttler Christian Poulsen, or left Paul Konchesky outside propped up on a chair with a "please feel free to take away" sign; but who is now obliged to kick off his new era by patching up and filling in. "Christian played very well at Blackpool and Paul will get an opportunity as well," Kenny 2.0 added by way of explanation, successfully resisting the urge to make an ironic "inverted commas" gesture with his fingers.
The news that Kenny will be spending the rest of the transfer window piecing Konchesky back together again using off-cut slices of spam and a staple gun will come as a disappointment to those who expected at least some token cash-flinging from Liverpool's new, less embarrassing Americans. "There's nothing been discussed regarding players or otherwise," Kenny 2.0 sighed, arranging 200 empty Marmite jars into a low-cost dining room centrepiece. "I've not spoken to them about money."
Which, if it's true, is taking gentlemanly reserve and the belief, against all evidence, that there's a beautiful walnut finish in there if you sand Konchesky down enough, just a little too far.
FIVER LETTERS
"I think you were being a bit disingenuous with the quote of the day on Friday. Eddie Howe said he was rejecting offers that he had at that time and he had nearly come close to leaving. Then Burnley came in with a better offer, and he accepted. So he was being honest about the situation, actually. Not that I want to defend the ship-jumping weasel who could have stayed on 'til the end of the season to help us to improbable promotion, rather than leaving us in disarray and trying to find a manager who will probably have to be paid in buttons and free accommodation in a beach hut" - Simon Dunsby.
"Re: The Fiver claiming Spurs would not beat ManUre the weekend just gone as they are too good, with this being based on the fact that the last time Spurs did win, they didn't have a good team or good players. Expanding this to the earlier statement that in the 22 subsequent fixtures since then Spurs have not won once, this surely implies that for each of those 22 subsequent fixtures Spurs did in fact have a good team. What on earth have you been drinking? Never mind, give us a pint of it!" - Craig Hills.
Send your letters to the.boss@guardian.co.uk. And if you've nothing better to do you can also tweet the Fiver.
BITS AND BOBS
Arsenal fans will have to put up with the sight of Laurent Koscielny and Sebastian Squillaci running into each other and falling over for at least another two months after it emerged Thomas Vermaelen needs surgery on his ankle-knack.
Everyone's favourite Fifa ExCo member Jack Warner wants Concacaf to be awarded an extra place at the 2014 World Cup. "We believe that Concacaf deserves another full place at the World Cup finals due to the performances of our teams on the field and the actions of our confederation off it," he said, struggling to contain his laughter. "We are unified in our efforts to make this happen."
The Scottish Premier League has announced there is "broad support for a 10-team Premiership and a 12-team Championship" following a meeting of SPL clubs at Hampden Park today, which would make a welcome change from the two-team SPL at the moment.
And in transfer news so underwhelming that this is probably of more interest to you, the Hoffenheim general manager Ernst Tannern believes Tony Pulis is playing hard to get over Demba Ba. "The Stoke manager is desperate to land Demba Ba. The failed medical by Demba appears to me just an element of show in the whole transfer saga," he whittered.
STILL WANT MORE?
Like a fat bird with weary wings, Football Weekly has landed early again. Enjoy.
Leonardo's arm-around-the-shoulder style at Inter is working better than Rafa Benitez's cool-as-ice-cold-milk approach ever did, says Paolo Bandini.
Dortmund are cruising to the German title but not in the manner of Al Pacino as a leather-clad undercover cop, mind, says Raphael Honigstein.
Sid Lowe's La Liga blog is going up late and we're sorry about that but it'll be here very shortly.
Michael Cox made five chalkboards for this week's blog, the show-off, but he only needed one to demonstrate how awful Wayne Bridge was against Arsenal.
Simon Burnton learned six things from the Premier League this weekend, but he's keeping one of them a secret.
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