The mighty toon have been linked with everyone from Henry and Arsharvin to Chimbonda and, today, random Hamburg defender Guy Demel.

Theories abound as to why we persistantly fail to sign any of our myriad targets; Ashley's really a billionaire tightwad, Wise and co are crap at their million pound a year jobs, everyone hates us, and so on. As despair begins to cloud our thoughts, ever more elaborate conspiracies emerge.

The 40k a week wage cap mentioned last week seems fantasy, more tabloid lies designed to tear us apart. But what is truly worrying is that every player we want takes weeks to talk to us, while we haggle over relative pittances, in which time we are usurped.

Arda Turan looks the part in the Euros, as does Modric. Mysterious forces (Spurs) took young Luka from us, now it looks like the Arse are gonna go for Arda.

Top players are few and far between. Most have every right to demand champions league, the few that are willing to chance it at aspiring premier league teams need to be snapped up early. Hopefully Ashley is prepared to back the king with cash, I believe he is. But he needs to remember the players market is far more competitive than business and the clubs selling the talent are in a much stronger position than the buyers.