Just another long week in the close season!

This week has seen another milestone in the history of football with the first £80m transfer of a player. The news that the posing, strutting, giant ego that is Mr Ronaldo had finally joined the Galacticos of Madrid wasn't that big a shock as those shadowy characters that lurk in the background, the agents, have been brokering this deal for over a year. What did surprise me was the lack of reaction from the Salford Yanks fans given that their best player had just been sold to one of their biggest rivals in Europe. In Milan their were demonstrations in the street when it was muted that Kaka might join another Manchester team but there wasn't even a whimper of a protest from the home of the Prawn sandwich brigade. Now it maybe that the fans were resigned to losing him and let's be honest you can do a lot of serious damage in the transfer market with £80m but to me it's just another piece of evidence that the real passion is seeping out of the game as teams and fans alike seem more worried about the balance sheet than the team sheet. But Football is big business now and as the gap widens between the haves and have nots in football it will not be long before the Premier League table correlates exactly to the financial league table that Deloittes produce each year.

Back on the real planet football Capt Birdseye has been in court this week defending a libel action brought against him by Melvyn Levi. It's fascinating reading the reports of the proceedings. Roman Abramovich apparently threatened to have the bearded one shot............not sure why though. He described his first board meeting at ER as "Feeding time at the Monkey House" and accused Mr Levi of being a "Shyster" One thing for sure and that's I don't think Capt Birdseye will ever win any prizes for being politically correct. There was one interesting fact that has emerged and that is back in 2007 a former director of Everton tried to buy the club but the deal fell through when Old Kenny boy put a £51m price tag on the mighty whites. All in all riveting stuff..........................the case continues!

England managed to put 6 goals past the unfortunate Andorrans to all but secure our passage to next years World Cup finals.

The only surprise was that England didn't score more goals against a part time team that were hopelessly out of their depth. For those of you who saw the interview with Jimmy Greaves at Half time I think he summed the game up brilliantly..........."I can't understand why 50000 fans have parted with their hard earned money to come and watch what is the worst international side ever..........I think I could score if I was playing even at my age" Nice one Greavesey.............perhaps take a bit more water with the half time whiskey next time!

Not long to the big Kick off now and still no transfer news. I think Jermaine best start thinking of his "I didn't really want to go" speech! The fixtures are out next week so I can start making arrangements for Exeter away. Magic.

MOT