Here we are. Just two days to go until some real, actual football happens. Real football where people actually kick a ball around and score goals rather than simply concocting extended fictions, half-truths, lies and entire tabloid news stories based around n neatly punning headline. But still the Mill stays true to its course, like Sid James and Hattie Jacques serving a seven-course lunch and making small talk about the polo season even as Bernard Bresslaw's vicious Burpa artillery causes great chunks of the British consulate's marble ceiling to crash down into the soup course, and Charles Hawtrey gets covered in plaster dust as just he sips at his glass of stage claret which is actually a triple vodka-Ribena. Bring it on. Bring on your real, actual football. The Mill refuses to be deflected from its mongering. This is simply the Mill's way.
So in the Sun this morning Alex Ferguson is keen to sign yet another inadequate and oddly jumpy goalkeeper who can be talked up excitedly before chucking a couple in against minor Premier League opposition, flapping in the Carling Cup and eventually being sold to Panathinaikos. This time it's 23-year-old FC Schalke keeper Manuel Neuer, who, if past form is anything to go by, wears flappy tracksuit bottoms and has a wild look in his eye.
Arsène Wenger has finally given up on poor old unhappy Marouane Chamakh, who looks a bit like a Cristiano Ronaldo, but with a greasy mullet. Arsenal fans "face a nail-biting wait until Tuesday to see if Cesc Fábregas joins Barcelona", which will probably involve ingesting most of their toenails too, given that Tuesday is currently five days away.
Meanwhile, Alvaro Negredo of Real Madrid wants to join Hull. "Alvaro likes the team and is keen to play for them in the Premier League," says his sweating, squint-eyed, halitosis-ridden Mr 10%.
In the Mirror, Chelsea have agreed a £4m deal with Kosice for 20-year-old Serbian striker Nemanja Matic, who frankly sounds a bit so-so, a bit Franco Di Santo, a bit Scott Sinclair. Moustachioed Argentinian defender Renato Civelli plans to "rekindle" his move to Blackburn Rovers. But Michel Salgado, 56, won't be joining him.
Middlesborough hope to sell ambling Brazilian goalscoring machine Afonso Alves. "A number of clubs are closing in on the Brazilian misfit striker", many armed with sticks, blowpipes and rudimentary wooden spears. Qatar is being mentioned. And Roy Hodgson and David Moyes will "battle it out" for Boro's Gary O'Neill using sharpened golfing umbrellas, before switching to a high-speed kick-boxing duel after Moyes is hurled though a plate glass window, then a gripping knife-fight balanced high on the exposed top floor of a half built office building, before Moyes is eventually hurled over the edge just as it looks like he's finally got Hodgson where he wants him, but pauses fatally to say something pointless and gloating, allowing himself to be stabbed in the ankle by Hodgson's trusty jungle boot knife before plummeting to his death looking sad and resigned and somehow no longer evil but tragic and lost.
The Daily Star has 'Arry Redknapp "on the Moses trail", which is either: a) a seven-day Sinai Ramada luxury coach tour of top Old Testament attractions featuring daily buffet lunch and early evening steel band Dead Sea Disco please bring Moses Trail identification to claim free Burning Bush cocktail and plate of Nazareth Nachos with house speciality Onan Guacamole; or b) an attempt to sign Crystal Palace striker Victor Moses, available for £5m.
Also in the Star, Portsmouth are favourites to lure former Middlesbrough disappointment turned strangely cold-eyed and sinister TV pundit Bolo Zenden out of his hot tub. "Hull, Blackburn and Portsmouth have expressed an interest and I am in talks with all those clubs," he said, holding three sets of talks simultaneously using a wheelie chair that spins round quickly.
In the Times, Michael Mancienne still thinks he's actually going to play for Chelsea and has signed a new deal but also gone out on loan to Wolves. The Daily Mail believes Fulham are on the verge of signing vast, immobile, bull-necked garden statue Mark Viduka. A move to Portsmouth has "collapsed" presumably after Viduka briefly sat down on it.
On Goal.com, Bernd Schuster has told German television that Real Madrid still want to sign cheeky, loveable Bayern Munich scruff Franck Ribéry and will be back with "a mammoth bid" this week. As will Chelsea. And Nadir Belhadj has told Le Buteur magazine, France's leading churned dairy spreads quarterly, that he might fancy a move to Spurs to join up with old mucker and Fagin-like gangmaster 'Arry Redknapp.