120 is a number forever associated with imprisonment. Marquis de Sade wrote his novel The 120 Days of Sodom, an erotic and sadistic tale of men and women eloping in a sealed, inaccessible castle, while he himself was detained inside the Bastille in 1785. Infamously, 120 days was the amount of time that the wonderfully named Dustin Diamond – aka Saved by the Bell’s Screech – was sentenced for earlier this year because he stabbed someone. And now, The Mill (and you, dear reader) must endure 120 more days until the January transfer window opens again, and will be forced to endure actual football, with transfer gossip confined to the frosted glass cage of speculation and emergency loans. Hunger strike anyone?
And so, much like Mr Sade, the Mill must pen his masterpiece from the depths of confinement. The story begins, as all good stories do, with Arsenal, who are considering a second January bid for Juventus striker Simone Zaza after their last-minute bid was rejected by the Old Lady at the 11th hour (or is it now the sixth?!) on Tuesday, according to Sky Italia. £22m should do the job, apparently, for the 24-year-old who has failed to feature in any of Juventus’s matches this season. Excellent value, I’m sure you’ll agree, Arsène. A January loan move isn’t out of the question, either, provided the Gunners (or indeed anyone else) are prepared to pay the Italian’s wages in full plus a £1.4m sweetener to Juve.
We move swiftly on to the second chapter, where Everton are set to be GAZUMPED by none other than Barcelona for Dynamo Kyiv captain Andriy Yarmolenko. Roberto Martínez tried his damndest to persuade the 25-year-old to sign for the Merseyside club earlier this week, but the forward resisted. Barcelona, whose transfer embargo is lifted come the new year, will reward that patience with a bid in January – Yarmolenko has a £14.5m release clause in his contract. Unlucky, Bobby.
Tottenham target Victor Wanyama is one step away from going on strike at Southampton after rejecting a new five-year contract. The Kenyan started the first three Premier League matches for the Saints this season but was left out of Sunday’s 3-0 win at Norwich with Ronald Koeman citing an extreme case of head-turnery. Despite the midfielder missing out on a late August move to the Lane and having two years remaining on his current deal, Wanyama is still embroiled in a quite magnificent sulk, in an attempt to force Southampton’s hand when January rolls around.
Elsewhere, Persistence’s Bournemouth may return for former Cherry Lewis Grabban after four bids were turned down during the summer transfer window – the latest of which was £7m. Grabban left Bournemouth for East Anglia in 2014 for £3m and seems keen to return to the south coast – the 27-year-old reportedly walked out of the team’s hotel prior to last week’s League Cup tie against Rotherham. Juicy!
And The Mill’s scribbling concludes with the news that Newcastle managing director Lee Charnley has emailed the club’s fans with news that the summer spending of £52.6m is “the start, not the end. It will take time and number of windows to get where we want to be.” A number of windows! After years of austerity, the bespectacled suit also proudly announced that “on top of the transfer spend, our wage bill for the year to 30 June 2016 will increase by a minimum of just under £9m as a result of our activity during this transfer window”. Hooray! Ajax’s Anwar El Ghazi and Joel Veltman, Hamburg’s Pierre-Michelle Lasogga and Lorient’s Raphael Guerreiro are just some of the names Charnley can hope to pay a colossal amount of money for in return for trying hard on a Saturday.