The more seriously football takes itself, the harder it is to keep a straight face. Apparently players' agents are pressing to be allowed to resume dual-dealing. Which will be news to those who had not realised that they ever stopped. Such comic relief does much to alleviate the general gloom about the economy and the weather. The sterner the game's mood, the funnier it becomes.
Everybody plays a part, including the referees. For an hour at Anfield last Sunday the match between Liverpool and Chelsea presented a ponderous spectacle on a par with the mating rituals of giant turtles. Enter Old Mother ... sorry ... Mike Riley, whose decision to send off Frank Lampard was so hilariously inept that even the Chelsea player did not know whether to cry or laugh. If anything a free-kick should have been given against Xabi Alonso for his follow-through after Lampard had won the ball.
No matter. Riley had rescued the game from ignominy and he even supplied a pay-off by refusing to dismiss another Chelsea player, Jose Bosingwa, presumably ruling that the defender had not in fact aimed a kick at the back of Yossi Benayoun as the Liverpool man tried to trap the ball against a corner flag but was merely trying to shake loose a stone in his boot. All of which was lugubriously observed by Liverpool's estranged American owners, Tom Mix and Hopalong Cassidy, who sat apart possibly wondering if it was worth missing the Super Bowl for this load of hominy grits.
Another spectator was Robbie Keane, seated in the directors' box rather than on the bench having fallen out of favour with Rafael Benítez after being signed from Tottenham six months earlier for just over £20m. A few days earlier the Liverpool manager had expressed the hope that "he will be a key player for us and score the winning goal in the last game of the season to win trophies". So naturally Keane was back at Spurs before Monday's transfer deadline, along with two of his old White Hart Lane team-mates, Jermain Defoe (now injured) and Pascal Chimbonda. However, talk of Tottenham re-signing Ossie Ardíles, Glenn Hoddle and Dave Mackay is just a mischievous rumour.
Arsenal appear to have done better in getting Andrei Arshavin from Zenit St Petersburg as a replacement source of inspiration for the stricken Cesc Fábregas. Arshavin should fit in. When Arsenal's punctilious passing game is functioning properly it is similar to the style of football the Russians first demonstrated on English grounds when Dynamo Moscow opened a few eyes, including those at Highbury, way back in 1945. Any reservations about Arshavin date from last summer's European Championship when after giving an outstanding performance against Holland in the quarter-finals he was anonymous against Spain, and Fábregas, in the semis. In any case the player will need time to get himself match fit, the Russian season having ended in November.
The very existence of the transfer window has come in for some criticism but here again it is surely necessary to preserve a sense of humour. Portsmouth's Tony Adams may have spoken for more than a few managers last weekend when he declared that during the January sales "heads have been turned up and down the country" and there is no escaping the fact that with transfer dealings during the season confined to four weeks in the new year, speculation about players becomes rife once the clocks have gone back. Managers have even accused other managers of making statements about players in order to alert them to the possibility of a move, which is a bit like Claude Rains being shocked to find gambling going on in Casablanca.
It has been suggested that transfers should be confined to the close season, which might be welcomed most by countries who play their football in the summer. What is more to the point, surely, is that a season without transfer talk would be as dull as Sunday's game at Anfield would have been had the referee not put on a red nose. And how else would clubs make a bit of cash from players approaching the end of their contracts if they could not offload them in mid-season, as Wigan have done by selling Emile Heskey to Aston Villa? They did not want to lose him, but if he was going to go anyway why not get a few quid while they could?
Wigan have spent the money buying Insomnia from Newcastle. Joe Kinnear will not have lost much sleep over that.
