What the papers say

The Daily Mirror reliably informed us last week that Fabrizio Ravanelli is on the verge of signing for Spurs, which will be news to Derby County who, according to the Sunday People, are about to pay Marseille £2 million for the Italian, while Spurs have offered Wimbledon £6 million (plus John Scales and Jose Dominguez) for John Hartson.

Confusion, too, over Roy Keane's future - he's all set to sign a pre-contract agreement with Real Madrid/Juventus/AC Milan/Inter Milan/Lazio/Barcelona (delete according to which newspaper you read) but the Sunday Mirror ensures us that he's likely to stay at Manchester United and is "on the verge" of opening new contract talks with them. There's that `on the verge' line again.

Celtic, meanwhile, are showing an interest in Liverpool's Dominic Matteo, who will be replaced at Anfield by Wimbledon's Ben Thatcher (according to the Star), while Rangers' pair Jorg Albertz and Giovanni van Bronckhorst are all set for moves to Liverpool (the Star) or Manchester United (News of the World).

Newcastle, you won't be surprised to hear, have been linked with yet another goalkeeper - this time Barcelona's Ruud Hesp - having being on the verge of signing at least 12 others while their former manager Ruud Gullit is rumoured to be Real Madrid bound, as the successor to soon-to-be-sacked John Toshack.

Finally, the Sun came up trumps on Saturday when it revealed "the sensational secret behind the most famous smile in soccer". Dwight Yorke, we learnt, has a permanent cheesy grin on his face because when he was two years old he was run over by a truck and lived to tell the tale. Barely giving us time to recover from that revelation we were then told that Yorke's nickname when he was a child was Anna, because "I used to have really long hair as a boy and people reckoned it made me look like a woman".