Paper Talk

We're a few weeks away from the end of the season. Lucky for Everton, we're in the FA Cup Final (still feels good), and there is still a decent battle going on at the top and bottom of the Premier League. However, the papers are getting itchy feet. They're bored of match reports and the feature pieces on certain players are a thing of the past because players don't talk to journalists anymore, except on the sly when they need something.

Anyway, the number of lines given to football gossip is increasing as teams apparently are starting to draw up their summer wish lists. Or is it more a case of agents contacting teams with their wish lists? I even saw the crew on Sky asking Mick McCarthy and Alex McLeish about whether they'd started planning for next season since both manager's won promotion. One of them at least had the nous to tell Dicky Keys that the season wasn't over yet.

So it's good to see the nonsense returning. We've all seen the Michael Owen link, and yet again Joe Ledley is on the radar. But the link to Christian Poulsen at Juventus is a newby. Let's hope he responds better to the possibility of a move to Everton than his Portuguese colleague, Tiago, who allegedly locked himself in the toilets when told the news and refused to leave yelling (presumably in Portuguese) "I'm not going there".

Poulsen, for the record, is a defensive holding midfield player who did very well at Seville for a few years before signing on with Juve last summer. He isn't a regular as his place is more regularly filled by a certain Mo Sissoko...