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Today’s blurb is getting straight to the point

Some days the Mill has a wonderful witty introduction, one that gently lowers you into a limpid pool of tittle-tattle with a friendly smile and a cheeky wink. It’s safe to say that this is not one of those days. We’ve got nothing. No sardonic take on the tabloids headlines, no clever blending of news story into transfer nonsense. No off-the-wall analogies or tall tales of the Mill’s morning. Just these words, slowly filling up the first paragraph until it looks respectfully full. There. That should do it.

Marseille are attempting to seal a £10m deal for is-he-good?-is-he-hopeless? Tottenham hitman Roman Pavlyuchenko. And the Russian isn’t the only player heading out of White Hart Lane. Juventus, Milan, Sampdoria and Galatasaray are all (inexplicably) attempting to lay their hands on Jermaine Jenas, with the Old Lady of Turin favourite to seal a season-long loan for the midfielder ahead of a £10m move next summer.

The Mirror reports: “Schwarzer sale to spark keeper merry-go-round”, which sounds rather exciting – brightly-painted custodians bobbing round to a tinking wurlitzer, Sam Allardyce and David Moyes sitting gleefully on their backs licking ice-creams. But instead Mark Schwarzer’s move from Fulham to Arsenal would only pave “the way for Fulham to make a move for Manchester City’s Shay Given“. That’s it. That’s not a merry-go-round. It’s barely even a see-saw.

The Liverpool Transfer Money Delivery Truck is beeping while the disembodied voice of Roy Hodgson urges: “Stand back, vehicle reversing” as it backs into a parking space outside the Stadium Municipal in Toulouse. It contains £10m and a seat reserved for striker André-Pierre Gignac on the long journey home.

Valon Behrami has tired of London and wants to make a £5m move to Roma. Or move out to the coast and get a little place with a garden. Somewhere he can have a bird table and dry his washing outside. But probably Rome.

Feyenoord midfielder Leroy “Bouncer” Fer is heading to Newcastle in a £4m deal. His nickname, contrary to what is being widely reported, the Mill understands, is due to his obsessive hoarding of early 90s Neighbours memorabilia featuring the popular labrador.

Not currently satisfied with the number of strikers who aren’t quite good enough for the Premier League on their books, West Brom are close to sealing a £2.5m move for Lokomotiv Moscow’s Nigeria striker Peter Odemwingie.

Baseball cap enthusiast and Stoke City manager Tony Pulis wants to smash his club’s transfer record once more, with a £9m move for Wigan’s in-and-out striker Hugo Rodallega.

And in a bumper crop of Championship tittle-tattle, Middlesbrough are prepared to offer £2.3m to Cardiff for Peter Whittingham, Leeds are keen on Darius Vassell and Hull will sell Daniel Cousin to Larissa.

Transfer windowManchester CityFulhamTottenham HotspurLiverpoolJohn Ashdownguardian.co.uk

Huw Richards applauds the scope and ambition shown by this celebration of one of English football’s great institutions

English football is not strong on awareness, either of itself or its history. The new season can be counted on to supply, despite conclusive World Cup evidence to the contrary, claims that England’s Premier League is the best in the world, and historical perspectives extending no further back than the creation of the EPL in 1992.

This double barrage demands countervailing voices to supply more historically informed perspectives. The extent to which John Williams does this is demonstrated in his variation on what, in other hands, can be one of the most hackneyed devices in football writing – the “All-time XI”. Williams’s selection from Liverpool’s rich history gives this book a conclusion in keeping with its scope and ambition.

His team places the one contemporary choice, Steven Gerrard, in midfield alongside Alex Raisbeck, a Scotsman whose career with the club ended in 1909, and ranges so widely across the time in between that only two short spells, 1934 to 1939 and 1991 to 1995, go unrepresented.

This is a football history that wants to look beyond legend and living memory – in Liverpool’s case much the same thing, given the massive shadow cast by the extraordinary achievements of teams built by Bill Shankly, manager from 1959 to 1974, and his immediate successors. The easy option is to focus on the years between 1963 and 1990, which brought 13 league championships, six European trophies and eight domestic cups – as many trophies as authentic giants such as Arsenal have won in their entire history – which many readers will know already.

Happily, Williams is more interested in telling them what they don’t know. Shankly is vividly recaptured, but appears for the first time around two-thirds of the way through. The years since are certainly done justice, with acerbity about the failings of players such as the solipsistic Stan Collymore reflecting judgments born of personal observation as well as historic understanding.

Williams, though, knows that these years have been well worked over, not least by himself in four earlier books. His main concern is to rescue the club’s earlier history from potential oblivion and cast it against a background of what was happening in sport, society and popular culture and in Liverpool as a community. He recounts the fluctuating fortunes of the city, its seaport and other industries, its people and the places where they lived, worshipped and shopped. It is striking to learn that only the intransigence of the Tory city council cost Liverpool a branch of Harrods in 1920, and entertaining to speculate about the long-term impact of a different outcome – but these digressions never obscure the central, football-based narrative that always foregrounds the club, its players, officials and supporters.

The story emerges through a lively year-by-year account, brought so up-to-date that it incorporates the appointment in June of the new manager, Roy Hodgson. It is told with a sharp eye for anecdote, colour and personality, rescuing from obscurity figures such as “the first great Liverpool manager”, Tom Watson – nominated by Williams as assistant to Shankly in coaching the All-time XI – and interwar defender Jim “Parson” Jackson, who was eventually ordained as a Presbyterian minister. A vital low-profile contributor such as Geoff Twentyman, the stalwart player-turned-chief-scout whose astute talent-spotting underpinned Liverpool’s great years, gets his due too.

Williams is, refreshingly for a sociologist, more concerned with telling the story than drawing sweeping conclusions, although several lessons emerge. One, which has contemporary resonance, is that there is little new in current concern over a Liverpool squad almost entirely composed of bought-in talent. That early line-ups were so heavily populated by Scots they were known as “the team of the Macs” is, admittedly, not unusual among English clubs, but that interwar Liverpool teams often included as many South Africans as 21st-century England cricket XIs do certainly is.

The perspective of 118 years shows that the period 1963 to 1990, as deep purple a patch as has been contrived by almost any club in any sport, is exceptional in its history. But the other 91 years have still furnished 13 major trophies. However, as Williams explains, Liverpool spent much of their earlier history fruitlessly pursuing the FA Cup, a trophy not won until 1965, and playing second fiddle to local rivals Everton. He also reminds us that, despite their colours and Shankly’s personal politics, the club could often have been characterised as “both conservative and Conservative”.

Every club should have a chronicle like this, giving other fans who would kill for Liverpool’s achievements – if not their current debt-bringing American ownership – one more reason for envy.

Huw Richards’s The Red and the White is published by Aurum.

Sport and leisureLiverpoolHuw Richardsguardian.co.uk

• Manager expects Carragher and Gerrard to stay ‘for life’
• Attempts to bring Sami Hyypia back to Anfield have failed

Roy Hodgson has confirmed that Liverpool will hand Jamie Carragher a new contract once the club’s ownership saga and transfer dealings are resolved this summer, and is confident the defender and Steven Gerrard will remain part of the Anfield furniture “for life”.

Carragher has entered the final year of his contract after change of manager and the uncertainty surrounding the club’s future under Tom Hicks and George Gillett put negotiations over an extension on hold. While it is unusual for Liverpool to allow a player of Carragher’s standing to get so close to a Bosman transfer, Hodgson has no concerns about losing the 32-year-old. The Liverpool manager said the defender will be approached with a new deal once rebuilding efforts and possibly a takeover are complete.

“I’m sure it [a contract extension] will be a priority,” said Hodgson, whose team were drawn against Trabzonspor of Turkey in the Europa League play-offs today. “Quite frankly so much has happened in the last five weeks, the hours I’ve spent at the club are enormous, that we haven’t actually got round to discussing contracts with players. I now know that Carragher has got one year left. That’s the only contract of a player that I know about. If you asked me how many years the others have got, I haven’t got a clue.”

Hodgson believes the Bootle-born defender and Gerrard will retain integral roles at the club long after their playing careers have ended. Hodgson wanted another Liverpool stalwart, Sami Hyypia, to return to Anfield in a coaching capacity this summer but was unable to convince Bayer Leverkusen to release the Finnish defender.

He added: “I can see players like Jamie Carragher and Steven Gerrard never leaving Liverpool Football Club. I can see them always being part of the club. In the same way I’m a bit disappointed that my attempts to bring Sami Hyypia back failed. It only failed because he’s so important to Bayer Leverkusen. We couldn’t get him out of his contract. He’s one I would also put in the Jamie Carragher-Steven Gerrard mould, Liverpool for life. Unfortunately he was let go at the end of the season before last and we can’t get him back. He’s too valuable to them.”

Liverpool’s Europa League ties – on 19 and 26 August – add to a congested start to the season for Hodgson, who insists the Premier League should not have scheduled its opening weekend three days after a known international date.

“It is frustrating not just for me, but for 90% of my colleagues,” he said. “In the Premier League there are very few teams who don’t have a lot of international players on their books going away. Fifa set this date a long time back and we have known 11 August is a Fifa date. It is a bit unfortunate they have decided to start the league three days after that.

“It would have been nice if that could have been pushed back and we had the same sort of time the teams in Italy, Spain and Germany have to prepare, because their leagues don’t start until after ours.”

Hodgson has allowed the Swiss defender Philipp Degen to join Stuttgart on a season-long loan.

LiverpoolJamie CarragherSteven GerrardAndy Hunterguardian.co.uk