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Today’s blurb has eaten too much porridge

Ah, José. Every stop he makes, he makes a new friend. But he can’t stay for long, just turn around and he’s gone again. Maybe tomorrow, he’ll want to settle down. Until tomorrow, he’ll just keep moving on (Ba-da, ba-da, ba-da, ba-da).

Yes, football’s littlest hobo seems to be on the move again, although they won’t be accompanied by the lump in the throat that his TV equivalent never fails to bring. Real Madrid have drawn up a two-man shortlist of potential replacements. Smoothly coiffed, scarf-wearing, German man-plus Joachim Löw is one of the names scrawled in Crayola on the back of an old receipt, reckons the Daily Mail EXCLUSIVELY, while the other is wilting north London spendthrift Arsène Wenger.

Quite how the denizens of the Bernabéu would react to a manager whose transfer policy seems to contradict everything Madrid have stood for over the past 15 years or so, but if the transition from Galácticos to 19yearoldprospectfromMetz-icos fails then at least they’ve had plenty of practice of late with those whistles and hankies.

Manchester City want former Barcelona vice-president Ferran Soriano and former Camp Nou technical director Txiki Begiristain to be their new chief executive and director of football. On the pitch, City are close to wrapping up a £2m deal for Israel’s Nir Biton after the midfielder sorted out his national-service-knack.

Anton Ferdinand is set to snub John Terry’s handshake offer this weekend, say the Mirror, hopefully in the time-honoured fashion of lifting the hand at the last minute and pressing his thumb to his nose before waggling his fingers. The tongue-poke and “Ner, ner, ner, ner, ner” is, of course, an optional extra.

Mark Hughes can’t wait to start spending at Loftus Road. South Africa striker Katlego Mphela of Mamelodi Sundowns and Fulham’s Clint Dempsey and Bobby Zamora will all be turning him down in the near future.

Newcastle have been told they will have to fork out £2m for Watford’s Adrian Mariappa, having had a derisory offer rejected. “I couldn’t begin to tell you how far away it was,” said Watford manager Sean Dyche. “My son’s got more in his money box,” he added, raising the intriguing question of how exactly you fit £500,000 in a child’s piggy bank.

Bolton, Swansea, Barnsley, West Ham and Sheffield United all want to borrow Raheem Sterling. Liverpool say they can’t have him.

Sunderland are keen on Bolton’s solid-pine battering ram Kevin Davies. Aston Villa will release Emile Heskey, Carlos Cuéllar, Habib Beye and Brad Guzan this summer.

Nicky Maynard has turned down the chance of four months of Premier League football, rejecting Wigan’s offer despite the Latics agreeing a fee of £2.2m for the Bristol City striker.

West Ham, having tired of their £6m pursuit of Rangers’ Nikica Jelavic, want Salomon Kalou on loan until the end of the season. Also in the Championship: Leicester will beat Sheffield Wednesday and United in the race to sign Stoke’s Ben Marshall and Doncaster have taken Peru defender Jesús Rabanal.

Transfer windowArsenalReal MadridManchester CityLiverpoolJohn Ashdown
guardian.co.uk

• Keane could make Villa debut against Everton
• Petr Cech commits to Chelsea despite transfer talk

Aston Villa are in talks to sign the LA Galaxy striker Robbie Keane on a two-month loan deal, which could be completed in time for their next Premier League game against Everton on 14 January.

The Villa manager Alex McLeish says the club have held productive talks with the Republic of Ireland international over the short-term deal, after which Keane will return to the US for the start of the Major Soccer League season in March.

McLeish said: “We are having a look at it with Robbie and trying to pursue it. That is the latest although nothing is done and dusted yet. If we don’t know by Monday, then it probably will not be done. That’s why I don’t want to say too much in case it doesn’t happen. We are certainly pursuing it and at the moment, both parties are keen. I would say the chances are a bit better than 50-50.”

If the deal is confirmed, Keane could face his Galaxy team-mate Landon Donovan, who has returned to Everton for a second loan spell, on his Villa debut.

Keane is currently maintaining his fitness by training with his former club Tottenham, but is keen to retain his sharpness by playing during the MLS break ahead of this summer’s Euro 2012 finals.

McLeish also restated his position that the club’s record signing, striker Darren Bent, is not for sale, amid continuing speculation linking him with Liverpool.

McLeish said: “We’ve not heard a thing from Liverpool. I’m aware of the speculation. But there has been no contact with this club and I think you’ve had three parties telling you that. But, even if there was contact, we would not entertain that [selling Bent].”

The Chelsea goalkeeper Petr Cech expects to sign a new extended contract despite reports that André Villas-Boas is planning to sell him in favour of the summer signing Thibaut Courtois, who is currently on loan at Atlético Madrid.

“Yes, I think [I will sign a new deal] and we will not have a problem,” Cech told the London Evening Standard. “I have been here for seven years and I have been more or less a regular starter, so I’m more than happy to stay. Chelsea are in the world’s top competition, so I have no reason to leave. I would like to see myself staying here.”

However, Cech also refused to rule out one day plying his trade elsewhere. “It is difficult to leave the best league in the world and if you take a look around, you will not see many teams of Chelsea’s category that would be looking to sign a new goalkeeper,” he said.

“If I would like to try something new, then it would have to be a club of a similar level to Chelsea. You never know, everything happens fast in the football life. You can sign a 10-year contract with a club and then end up leaving after three years. I’m 29 years old and I believe that there is still time for a possible change.”

Transfer windowAston VillaLA GalaxyChelseaLiverpoolTottenham Hotspurguardian.co.uk

Roman Abramovich may be compelled to act sooner rather than later if it appears Chelsea are heading for the Europa League

The old immutable law of the ex ensured that Glen Johnson would be the man to pop up with the late winner that helped his current club beat his old employers on Sunday. It is a law that was never likely to apply to Fernando Torres, who was granted only a fleeting appearance in the final stages but still managed to convey the impression of a man out of touch with whatever qualities persuaded Roman Abramovich to spend £50m to take him to Stamford Bridge last January.

In a dozen attempts, Chelsea have still not managed to beat a Liverpool team managed by Kenny Dalglish. A 1-0 defeat in the equivalent fixture last season, when Torres made a spectacularly hapless debut a few days after his arrival at Stamford Bridge, did no good to Carlo Ancelotti’s hopes of remaining at the club that he had led to a league and FA Cup Double the previous season. Now there is the question of how long André Villas-Boas, his expensively acquired successor, can cling on to the position.

Three of Chelsea’s last four league matches in the past month have ended in varying forms of ignominy. The representatives of a club into which the owner has poured around £750m would not have expected to lose by the only goal to the newly promoted Queens Park Rangers at humble Loftus Road. The subsequent 5-3 home defeat at Arsenal’s hands would have been simply unthinkable during the reign of José Mourinho, whose achievements his fellow Portuguese was employed to emulate.

Mourinho drew criticism towards the end of his time in London for sending out teams that played with a pragmatism inappropriate to the amount of money lavished on assembling their components, not to mention out of sync with the owner’s desire to see attractive football, but in his time there were plenty of 4-0 wins and absolutely no outright humiliations of the sort inflicted by Arsène Wenger’s players.

That was followed by a 1-0 victory at Ewood Park, at a time when beating Blackburn Rovers is no indication of a team’s quality. And then, following the international break, came this calamitous last-minute collapse, the result of the sort of indiscipline that would have had Mourinho frothing at the mouth. Abramovich paid Porto £13m in compensation for allowing Villas-Boas to leave before the end of his contract. Had he stayed, no doubt he would have maintained the extraordinary success of his first season, when his players won four trophies, including the Europa League, and went through the Portuguese league season unbeaten. But winning the Europa Cup at the age of 33 is not the same as winning the European Cup at 41, as Mourinho did.

“The owner did not pay €15m to get me out of Porto to pay another fortune to get me out of here,” Villas-Boas said on Sunday night, with more bravado than realism. If Abramovich is not distracted from football matters by his attempt to convince the high court that it would be wrong to order him to pass over a substantial part of his bank balance to his former partner Boris Berezovsky, he will think nothing of paying whatever amount of compensation is stipulated in his young manager’s contract. This is a man who shocked the art world by spending £63m at auction on works by Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud three years ago, smashing records of all kinds in order to please his girlfriend.

Over Villas-Boas’s shoulder lurks the shadow of Guus Hiddink, newly unemployed as a result of Turkey’s inability to make it through last week’s Euro