Swine Flu Derails Trade Rumours

With possibly the best rumour-to-reality story of the close-season, it would appear that Micah Richard, far from being at Goodison Park this week to seal a deal to move to Everton, was in fact in an isolation tent somewhere in Manchester having contracted Swine Flu on a holiday to Cyprus. It is one of those moments when the truth is better than the fiction (the fiction being Richards' transfer to Everton). The good news is that Richards is OK and will recover in time - we hope - to be the subject of more transfer links next week.

I wonder if he invoked the government's recommendation that all people who think they have swine flu can now call in sick for two weeks.

Elsewhere, our attempts to sign Sheffield United's tidy-looking right back, Kyle Naughton, could be scuppered by a late bid from.... Tottenham. Now there's a surprise. If there is a team with in England with a less structured approach to signing players for their bloated squad than Newcastle, it is Tott, and now with 'wheeler-dealer' Harry Redknapp making those decisions, it will be even less structured. This is the club that sold right-back Pascal Chimbonda to Sunderland in July 2008 only to re-sign the bloke in the January transfer window. Chimbonda apparently didn't like the North East (nobody is going to criticise him for that), but Tott didn't need him and he spend most of the remainder of the 09 season on the bench. He's still there. As is Alan Hutton and Chris Gunter.

Tott will do the usual, offer greater wages and the virtues of living the dream in the Smoke. It's up to young Naughton to see the light and take the short ride across the M62 and join a club where he'll play every week for a good manager and not end up each Saturday in a Essex night club with Ledley King.