Transfer window madness: The strangest moves this summer.

Jordan Rhodes (Huddersfield Town to Blackburn Rovers)

First of all, let's get this straight from the get go, as a player, Rhodes isn't a bad signing by any means; he's only 22, a Scotland international and scored a remarkable 40 goals in 45 game for Huddersfield, in League One, last season.

The barmy thing about this transfer is the fee. All £8 million of it. Whichever way you look at it, £8m is an awful lot of money to splash on a 22 year old who has only proven himself in League One, especially when you see that both Dimitar Berbatov and Emmanuel Adebayor went for less.

Nuno Gomes (Braga - Blackburn Rovers)

Yup, Blackburn again. Back in the early 2000s, Nuno Gomes was one of the hottest striking prospects in Europe. Now, at 36, the former Portuguese hitman finds himself in the N-Power Championship trying to help a Lancashire-based box of frogs return to the Premier League at the first time of asking.

Having appeared to be winding down his career in his homeland and his best days behind him, to see him pitch up at Blackburn is something of a surprise. Maybe he'll be the experienced figure to aid Jordan Rhodes' development and help Rovers to promotion. On the other hand, Steve Kean might just have got real life mixed up with his Championship Manager 01/02 save.

Steve Kean eyes up his next Portuguese hotshot.

Julio Cesar (Inter Milan - Q.P.R.)

After narrowly escaping the drop last season, Q.P.R. needed to strengthen and tighten a leaky defence. Having shipped Paddy Kenny out to Leeds, they needed an upgrade in the goalkeeping department so turned to West Ham's Rob Green as their new number one. For all of two games.

Yes, no sooner had Rob Green made his first multi-annual cock-up, Mark Hughes swooped to sign Inter Milan's Brazilian custodian and formerly one of the most highly-rated keepers in the world. Unlucky, Bob.

Richard Wright (Preston North End - Manchester City)

Talking of once highly rated players and underwhelming English goalkeepers, Richard Wright's move to Manchester City was probably the most bizarre transfer to happen this summer. Not only has the former Arsenal and Ipswich man been signed with the idea in mind that he will never play, Wright's move comes off the back of a spell at Preston that lasted all of a month. The reason? He felt homesick at being so far away from his family in Ipswich.

Either Richard's geography isn't that great or that few extra grand a week means he can afford not to love his kids as much.

Learn geography with Richard Wright

No-one (Liverpool & Manchester United)

At some point in June, Alex Ferguson and Brendan Rodgers must have bumped into each other, literally, and dropped their pile of carefully prepared transfer plans. In the ensuing scramble to bashfully pick-up their notes, the two managers must have accidentally swapped papers.

Liverpool needed goals and ended up signing two central midfielders; Manchester United needed a new central midfield and ended up with a star striker.

Whilst the Red Devils' transfer failings can be masked by the potency of Robin van Persie, Liverpool's bungled pursuit of a goal-getter isn't likely to be made any better by the fact three of their big signings are two midfielders not renowned for hitting the back of the net and a young, hard-working but ultimately inexperienced forward.

Giampaolo Pazzini/Antonio Cassano (Swap deal between Inter Milan & A.C. Milan)

The surprising thing about this transfer isn't that it happened between two fierce rivals - the transfer market between these two clubs has always been surprisingly open - but the fact that neither player seemed to fit in at the club they were going to.

As Zonal Marking's Michael Cox explains, Pazzini is at his best when wingers are putting crosses into the box, a style of football Milan haven't played in a long while. Meanwhile, at Inter, it's not entire certain if or how Cassano will slot into the team in a way which will make his signing worthwhile.

Gaston Ramirez (Bologna to Southampton)

There are a few questions hanging over this move:

Where did Southampton get £16m from?

How did they tempt one of Uruguay's star players and one of Europe's hottest properties to St Mary's?

How long will he stick around for?

After supposedly having about 48 medicals at Liverpool, according to Twitter's many 'In The Know Agents', what is the record for the number of medicals at a club before signing somewhere else?

Joey Barton (Q.P.R. to Marseille on loan)

I mean, seriously, why? Just why?

The money'll come out tomorrow...

I can't help it. Every year I try not to get excited about the impending closure of the transfer window, and every year I get caught up in it. This year's not exactly shaping up to have any of the Robinho and Berbatov-laden insanity of summer 2008, but then again, neither did that day.

What we can expect, though, is a huge amount of panic buying. And industrial-strength stalling from the berks at Sky Sports News, who've been preparing for this hallowed day for the last seven months.

Andy Burton will be being interviewed in the studio every 45 minutes or so, saying his sources are saying their sources are saying that someone is getting on a plane to somewhere, but he can't give us any details because he needs to keep it private. Meanwhile, Jim White will almost certainly be trying to convince us that Sunderland signing Peter Crouch will happen, and that it is every bit as important as the giant shock transfer we're all waiting for. Adam Leventhal will try, and fail, to get a nice view down Natalie Sawyer's cleavage.

The BBC live text system will be as dull as ever. Sam Lyon will retweet some tool's lies about Sergio Biscuits being seen travelling along the M60, possibly tongue-in-cheek but you can't be too sure with Sam, he might just be a thicko. Jonathan Stevenson's updates will be pretty reliable, but just five minutes after you've read about them in the next day's papers. God, he's slow.

Owen Hargreaves is looking like being the comedy story of the day, probably being subjected to cotton wo- erm, "fitness tests" at various places, allegedly Manchester City, which is funny in itself. I'd bet cash money on him failing, regardless of what YouTube tells you.

But forget everything else. Tomorrow is about Arsenal. They'll be referred to as a crisis club dozens of times, the words "pivotal", "crucial", "vital" and anything else you can find in the thesaurus will be banded around in reference to the day's importance to Arsene Wenger's time as Arsenal manager, probably by Craig David, who's my tip to be stationed outside the Emirates with that big façade of the Arsenal legends linking arms in the background. You know the one.

Intrepid SSN reporter David Craig gears himself up for another hectic transfer deadline day

And in the end, it'll all be a massive disappointment. Stoke will sign an average Championship player, Arsenal will panic buy someone unproven but with promise (cue ominous music), and Leventhal won't see any boobs. I can't remember a truly interesting transfer window since that aforementioned wonderful day in 2008. At least this one won't feature the saga of whether Barca will make a late bid for Cesc Fabregas.

We all know it'll be rubbish. I've told you what's going to happen already. But you'll still skive off work and be glued to the tv, your phone and/or the internet all day, won't you? Of course you will. And I'll be right there with you

A HtO guide to: Being a transfer news guru

We all know summer is traditionally transfer silly season. It seems tradition that papers spread and, on occasions, dream up the latest, almost instantly tedious, transfer saga. But these shenanigans are no-longer restricted to the news room and journalists.

You just have to open up Twitter to see plethora of possibly, genuinely, deluded bores churning out a deluge of transfer 'news' at a rate of knots.

It's so easy, anyone can play!

Yes! You, too, can make up a vast platter of transfer bollocks news to serve up. It's easy.

Here's Half Time Oranges' handy 10 step guide to being a Transfer Watcher And Teller:

1. Pick a club, any club.
2. Pick a player said club has been linked with at any time over the past 18 months or a young 'unknown' who turns out to be amazing in the latest Football Manager game.
3. Pick a number, normally between seven and 30.
4. Add a '£' before the number and a 'm' after it.
5. Say a 'source' has told you that the club has bid said amount for said player (remember, you can't name sources - which is just as well, considering yours is about as real as Lolo Ferrari's ghost's tits).
6. Say you're pretty sure it's going to happen but can't confirm it until the club do (you know, because you don't want to get sued or anything).
7. Avoid awkward questions by saying your gran's dead and that you have to go offline for a bit.
8. Questions persisting? 'Kill off' your parents/siblings/pets. Hey, that's what they're there for!
9. Dispatch of as many family members as necessary until no one dares question your credibility for fear of upsetting a soul so brave that, despite their entire family being wiped from the earth inside a week, can still soldier on bravely to report that they reckon Kaka will be at Chelsea next season.
10. Transfer happen? Yes? Brag smugly to your doubters. No? Say it fell through at the last minute. Ideally by a last minute price-hike.

And there you have it. Blag, entertain and annoy like a true pro.

Flatline Deadline

For many football fans, yesterday was the day that those who weren’t at work sat perched on the edge of their sofa, curtains drawn, staring at a Sky Sports News lovely and the average bloke sat next to her, whilst those at work kept a crafty eye on proceedings through a constantly minimizing Internet Explorer window.

Yes, yesterday was transfer deadline day! With millions of fans - watery eyes, heart palpitations and all - were glued to whatever screens were in front of them in the hope of their club pulling off a major signing before the transfer window slammed shut on the fingers of cash-splash happy managers (or, if you’re a Portsmouth fan, in silent prayer that the other half of your squad isn’t sold).

However it was all a bit of an anti-climax. While rumours; from the sensational (Ribery to Liverpool) to the reasonable (David James to Spurs) to the downright ridiculous (Voronin to Arsenal) were in abundance, Leeds’ Jermaine Beckford was spotted at the training grounds of the remaining 91 clubs in the football league (presumably by a best friend’s mam’s uncle’s partner’s dog’s son’s brother’s owner) and Notts County were supposedly throwing cash at retired football luminaries such as; Figo, Nedved and probably Pele, Beckenbauer and Bobby Moore, nothing of any note actually happened.

As much as Sky tried to make the transfer of Danny Collins seem important, everything was, well, a bit rubbish. They darted from club to club speaking to their roving reporters only to be told: ‘There’s sod all happening’ - albeit in a more articulate way - while a smarmy looking bloke sat on a telephone in the studio telling them why sod all was happening before feeding us false hope by saying: ‘but it could… will it… probably not… but there is a chance.’ Did it? No.

What did happen was; Pompey managed to replace the half of the squad they had sold… before quickly selling the other half and Man City signed no-one, presumably because Hughes’ arms are knackered after hurling huge sacks of dosh at clubs, players and probably passers buy in the street all summer.

So, all in all, another wasted afternoon sat in the company Sky Sports or BBC’s text commentary on their website. No change there then. Will we learn in time for January’s deadline? Probably not and with good reason: I’ve heard from a reliable source that Frank Lampard will be signing for Stockport.