Bah! Readers, bah! No sooner have Man City declared they will no longer spunk huge amounts of money on big name players and Wayne Bridge than the quality of transfer rumours sinks lower than a depressed deep sea diver. In fact, so poor is the quality of today's guff that we've inserted the most interesting piece of gossip somewhere in this column in code to keep you reading. Or it may just annoy you, but these are troubled times in journalism and we've got to innovate and mutualise and do at least seven other buzzwords before 10.13am or we're toast.

Harry Redknapp woke up this morning feeling a little old and stale and decided the only thing that will pep him up is some kind of Moroccan footballing prodigy. So much so, that he's sent his scouts to, erm, scout Caen forward Youssef El Arabi. Spurs will have to fight off competition from Juventus and Wolfsburg, who apparently have a few euros to throw around these days. Harry will attempt to raise some funds by selling Roman Pavlyuchenko to Villa – and he'll even throw a bench for him to sit on for free.

El Arabi would set Spurs back £4m, which is exactly what Stoke are willing to pay West Ham for Mark Noble. "I like to do a bit of business in January, it livens things up," says Tony Pulis, who should be warned that money can't buy you happiness.

Although it can buy you a wantaway striker from Wigan – Mauro Boselli is set to leave the DW stadium for Genoa.

The lucrative trade in customised body armour for Premier League footballers has collapsed with the news that serial knee-botherer Mark van Bommel will reject the advances of Man City and Spurs and join Milan instead.

There's no doubt that West Brom want to sign John Carew. "We are interested in Carew," said West Brom coach Eddie Newton. "There's no doubt about that."

Once they've wrapped up that business, the Baggies will thank Scott Carson for sparing the world from having to watch England blunder about at Euro 2008, by selling him to Cardiff.

London 2012 organisers are worried that Sir Alex Ferguson's puce-faced rants will terrify small children at next year's Olympics, so they've decided to ask Stuart Pearce – who may admittedly scare small children too – to manage the Great Britain team.

The Mirror reports that Blackpool are set to make a shock £200,000 bid for Southampton's Jason Puncheon, a move made slightly less shocking now that it's been printed in a national newspaper and an online gossip column read by as many as 32 people.

And finally, Leicester and Leeds will play Risk to see who gets Michael Johnson on loan. Sven has already got most of North America, two artillery cards and Irkutsk though, so the smart money's on him.