With the close of the transfer window, comes the time-honored tradition whereas the manager parades out his latest signing, all decked out in his new kit, scarf aloft.  For the fans watching the proceedings on the telly, or on the club website, it feels a bit like a day at the zoo or, as is my personal preference, the aviary.  We sit at home or at the office, popcorn in hand, and gawk at an uncomfortable creature that's clearly out of its natural habitat.  A football player is in his element when he is playing football, not smiling stupidly at the cameras in an empty stadium.

And so now we have Albert Riera.  Out come the prerequisite YouTube videos, with Albert looking like a world-beater, all full of neat tricks.  He had a great season last year at Espanyol, or so I keep reading, though I can't seem to remember him much, having watched a decent amount of Spanish football (mostly Madrid and Barca, to be fair).  I remember even less about his little stint at Shity a few years ago.  He says he's matured since then.  Let's hope so.

I don't mean to be a downer but.... we've seen some pretty dodgy transfers before, and Riera looks more to me to be more in the mold of Josemi or Morientes than Alonso or Torres.  I must emphasize .... looks like . Since I don't know jack about his footballing abilities, I'm giving a careful asessment of the, shall we say, visuals. His jaw seems to be a bit too square or something... the nose a tad angular....like some sort of short-haired Fabio.  Now, I bet Fabio has a great first touch, just not sure that it's in the footballing sense, if you know what I mean....You do know what I mean don't you?

I wouldnt let my wife or daughter near him is what I'm just sayin'... not that I have one either. 

Again, I'm just sayin'. You can't blame a guy for just sayin', can you?  I just don't want anyone to get their hopes up, that's all. Not jealous or anything -- not in the least bit.

This unconfirmed report crossed my desk yesterday.  It just goes to show the power of money to turn someone into a complete asshole in no time at all.  No sooner did Shity find itself flush in the pocket, than it started behaving badly; waving its petro-dirhams around like a drunken sailor let loose in a Bangkok whorehouse.  With mai-tai goggles firmly in place, they ended up taking home lady-boy Robinho intead of a proper lay. It's going to be a rough morning for them.

Now, I always had a soft spot for Shity.  I found their fans to be generally good-humoured about their perennial crapness, and they've always lacked the red-faced loutishness of their dooshy neighbors.  It was also nice to see some of our thick-around-the-waist legends spend some of their sunset years there.  That was nice of them. They also always knew their place.  They were a club with tradition ... but without the annoying illusions of grandeur of a Newcastle or West Ham.  Now they're a bunch of assholes with a bank account... Great.  Just what we needed.  Another one of those.

Now, let's be clear. Torres is going nowhere.  And it's not just because the transfer deadline closed before Shity could make a right go at him. I truly believe the boy's heart is at Anfield, and that he possesses that rare trait in football these days: loyalty. You could see how hard it was for him to leave his boyhood club, Atletico, and I don't think he would have signed with Real Madrid for all the money in the world.

Still, having another club with gillionaire owners not afraid to splash money around does put Liverpool in a bit of a pickle. The economic reality is that as the teams around us get richer and richer, we will be less able to remain competitive in the transfer market.  Simply put, the supply of world-class talent is fixed, and the silly money being brought to the game by the likes of Abramovich and Abu Dhabi is not just affecting demand, and therefore raising the price, its creating a market distortion because they're operating under different, non-freemarket, principles as anyone else.  At this point I would love to create a nice little graph that illustrates what I'm talking about... you know, like they have in the Economist. Unfortunately I'm new to this and don't know how,  and I'm too arsed to figure it out in any event.  Instead, I'm going to get all old-school and paint a picture for you with words.  Bear with me:

About 10 years ago, people in Argentina thought they were the shit. They had a booming economy, and lots of beautiful women with fake tits. An Argie friend if mine at the time told me "the streets of Buenos Aires are paved with breasts" I booked the first flight to the BA and found to my delight that he wasn't as full of it as usual.  Then the economy went to hell.  Turns out that pegging their currency to the dollar hadn't been such a hot idea after all.  The country was in huge debt and the fixed conversion rate made imports relatively cheap, meaning that all the wealth being created was leaving the country. The bubble burst, there was a run on the banks, and everyone went broke overnight.

Suddenly, your average Argentine bloke who once fancied himself a properous member of the middle class, with a German car, regular vacations to Europe and America, and a buxomy mistress with her own flat, now had to make do with taking the bus and making love to his own wife.  It still wasn't a very bad life, but not what he was used to. And now it was the Europeans and Americans turn to descend on Buenos Aires with their cheap money... and for  the expat from Bristol to move into the luxury flat with the buxomy mistress. A sad state of affairs for the Arggie.

That's us now.  Sure, we still have it relatively good.  Top four.  World-class players. But the economics around us are changing, and decidedly not in our favor.  You can bet this is not the last we'll see of Shity approaching our players, or luring other top talent away from poorer clubs in the Premier league.  Relative to the truly mind-blowing amount of oil money entering the English game now, the likes of Hicks of Gillette are skint.  Benitez knows this. And he expressed his concerns today.  Looks like more of the Rieras for us and less of the Silvas.

Dark days indeed.  Enough to make one cry into his Malbec