Only a few more months of gossip and speculation

until the next transfer window opens.

Well Spurs got some in, couldn’t get some, let some go and had some stay before the summer transfer deadline ended, midnight last night August 31st.

French fullback Pascal Chimbonda has joined for an undisclosed fee – said to be £4m rising to £5m depending on appearances and success at White Hart Lane, Wigan were demanding £6m but £2m less is still a bit of a prfit on the £400,000 they paid out to Bastia 12 months ago for the player Spurs seemed to have been linked with for ages, especially after him handing in a transfer request still wearing his Wigan kit after their last game of the season.

Spurs fullbacks were found wanting on too many occasions last season and were responsible for quite few late goals conceded, Chimbonda and Benoit Assou-Ekotto look to be a decent upgrade. It was thought Korean fullback Young-Pyo Lee, who has been playing on his more natural right side than the left of last season, would be off but even with a done deal with AS Roma he decided to stay, Rodrigo Defendi has joined them on loan.

The other main target for Martin Jol was a left sided midfielder but repeated offers for Middlesbrough’s Stewart Downing were rebuffed, so they stepped in front of a few other sides and picked up Fulham’s malcontented playmaker Steed Malbranque for about £2m.

He’s out for a bit with a groin injury but I seem him as a good buy, someone who can make the midfield tick and run the play, in a way that Jenas will never manage but there’s the thing Jenas seems a favourite so will Malbranque be shunted out to the left and wasted or will he rot on the bench like Danny Murphy ?

Routledge went the other way to Fulham on loan, he was certainly unlucky after breaking his foot on his league debut for Spurs last year he was overshadowed by the emergence of Aaron Lennon on the right wing and so has only made 3 appearances for Spurs since his move from Palace and this is his second loan spell.

The other signing was something the management were after another big striker, to give them 4 – two small and two big. And it turned out someone familiar – Mido who had spent the last 18 months at Spurs on loan. Well Jol, the staff and players know him and what he can do when it’s in him to do it, but will he like sitting on the bench as Berbatov starts ?

Well the proof is in the eating, can this lot be worse than those that have lost 2 out of the first 3 games in the Premiership this season…?

Is West Ham’s capture of Argentinian internationals Carlos Tevez & Javier Mascherano the transfers of the season ?

It’s some deal both in terms of what the Hammers are getting, who they beat to get them and the way in which it’s being done. Have to say they looked pretty good in the World Cup may fit in well in the Premiership and it did remind me off Ricky and Ossie coming to the Lane all those years ago.

Of course the biggest story of transfer deadline day was the when will they just do it Ashley Cole saga, which really did end strangely.

ARSEnal want £30m for him, Chelsea aren’t willing to go that high and had offered £20m, which they then lowered to £17m. ARSEnal then offered £5m for Chelsea’s want away defender William Gallas, who is 29 and on the last year of his contract.

And then when the dust has cleared after midnight last night Cole is at Chelsea with ARSEnal getting Gallas and £5m – so ARSEnal got in their valuation £10m for a player they wanted £30m for, strange 😯