Now, this isn't confirmed by the club, but they seem more interested in denying rumours at the minute, although I suspect it's more a case of having something to publish on the web, but Sky Sports seem certain it's happened.

If reports are to be believed we've offered West Ham £11mn. for 29 year old defender Matthew Upson.

Now, while this points to Martin Laursen having a much more serious injury then we're led to believe and Martin O'Neill fears he won't be coming back, okay maybe it doesn't but it could, £11mn. for a little above average defender is madness.

Morning all. Not long until the game so I'm making this a quick one as I've got a lot on before kick off and while it's mostly rumours, they're quite interesting ones.

The window has only jut opened, which means Martin O'Neill has looked at his kitchen calender and started to panic. Nobody told him that he could start speaking to agents or other clubs about players and now he has to rush, which means we'll get a player or two in the last week of the window and they'd have wasted three weeks of playing for us.

Back in June last year there was a rumour doing the rounds that we were interested in Michael Kightly from Wolves and low and behold, it's reappeared today.

Now, back then I couldn't really comment on his footballing abilities as I'd not recalled ever seeing him play but today, I can comment; I think he's an excellent player in the Championship.