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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

Kenny Dalglish already has an emotional hold on the dressing room, but Steve Clarke could be the man to turn Liverpool into an interesting football team again

When Carlo Ancelotti left Milan for Chelsea, he could hardly have imagined that the challenge in England would include a rendezvous with his old friend catenaccio. But that was what he confronted when Liverpool turned up at Stamford Bridge on Sunday. A mere 24 hours after the Premier League had indulged itself in an orgy of goals and delinquent defending, he faced opponents who had double‑locked the back door.

These days players in England are seldom invited to perform in a line-up featuring three central defenders and two wing‑backs. A defensive line of four is almost compulsory in the Premier League, as it is around the world. Even the tactically eccentric Diego Maradona abandoned his experiment with a three‑man back line before arriving for the World Cup in South Africa last summer, although Napoli and Udinese have been employing it to some advantage in Serie

The Spanish striker will want to forget his first game for Chelsea after failing to make any impact against his former club Liverpool

Fifty million quid means that you are not entitled to much in the way of allowances, so it is not really being harsh to suggest that yesterday Fernando Torres made the worst debut by an expensive Chelsea centre‑forward since Chris Sutton arrived for a record fee from Blackburn Rovers in 1999. Sutton, too, made his first appearance in the blue shirt at Stamford Bridge, after his £10m transfer from Blackburn Rovers, and early in that match he made such a mess of a straightforward one-on-one with the opposing goalkeeper that his career in England never recovered.

The comparison became irresistible only 90 seconds into yesterday’s game, when Maxi Rodriguez, Torres’s old team‑mate, inadvertently made Chelsea’s new star a present of the ball with a wayward square pass inside the Liverpool half. With the ball at his feet, and Liverpool’s back three spread across the field, Torres had only Martin Skrtel, 10 yards away, blocking his path as he started for goal.

And then, unmistakably, he bottled it. He was still five yards from Skrtel and 25 yards from goal when he let fly with his right foot, unleashing a shot that sheared off his boot and flew high and wide of Pepe Reina’s goal. Not even close.

All would have been forgiven by the blue hordes had he gone on to redeem himself. But after half an hour, when Didier Drogba ran down the inside‑right channel and measured a fine straight pass for Torres, Jamie Carragher flew across to dispossess him with a superlative sliding interception.

His worst moments came in the 33rd minute, when he put an end to a promising Chelsea counter-attack by sending a pass intended for Ashley Cole several yards behind the full‑back and