He's back! Naohiro Takahara signs for Urawa Reds

That's quite a team they've got brewing up there at Saitama Stadium. Evidently finishing second in the J-League didn't go down too well with the biggest club on earth last season. So they've dangled 1.5million euros in the face of Eintracht Frankfurt and snatched Naohiro Takahara from the Hessen club.

Takahara's transfer is a bit of a strange one. The former Hamburger SV man wasn't especially thrilled with Frankfurt's signing of Czech striker Martin Fenin this January, but then a cynic might suggest that one way to answer his critics might be for Takahara to get fit and start banging in the goals for Frankfurt again. He banged them in last season. But then, Takahara has always been a fits-and-spurts kind of guy.

Anyway, the 28-year-old will be back in the J-League next season. He's a high profile player, so his signing is likely to regenerate a bit of interest in a league that has stagnated somewhat of late. How Takahara fits in to a strike force that already contains Tatsuya Tanaka, Yuichiro Nagai and the newly-signed Edmilson is anyone's guess, although Nagai already looks the odd-man-out in that foursome.

Urawa have been doing a fair bit of wheeling and dealing this winter, and given the funds available to the club, that's really no surprise. The Reds are trying to offload the eternally-injured Shinji Ono, but a quick physical by Ruhr-strugglers VfL Bochum revealed what everyone in Japan already knows - Ono hasn't got the knees for the professional game any more.

The Reds have apparently signed Oita Trinita midfielder Tsukasa Umesaki for a whopping 300 million yen, although where Umesaki fits in to the Urawa line-up is anyone's guess. Urawa will have to make do without injured playmaker Robson Ponte for up to six months, while Makoto Hasebe is apparently on his way to Serie A outfit Siena. Yet with ex-Japan international Alex reportedly on the verge of a move back to Urawa from Salzburg, the highly-rated Umesaki could find his chances at Urawa limited.

That's not likely to be a problem for Naohiro Takahara. Still, you could forgive the cynics among us for chanting "are you Chelsea in disguise?" the next time the Reds machine rumbles in to town.