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"Purse (but no handbag) for Arsenal"

Strong rumours have surfaced again around St Andrews that Birmingham City central defender Darren Purse has all but put pen to paper for Arsenal in a deal worth £9 million to go ahead when the transfer window re-opens.

Whilst this is a sad loss to Birmingham we have apparently lined up out of favour Ferdinand Coly from lens (as a replacement for Purse) for a fee of £650-000 and with the remaining funds Shevchenko of Milan and Di Canio of West Ham are said to be on there way too.

Other (strongly rumoured) major January signings include...

Barry from Villa to Blackburn/Tottenham
Hargreaves from Munich to Villa/Arsenal
Kaladze from AC milan to Arsenal
Gudjohnsen from Chelsea to Arsenal
Ronaldinho from PSG to Man Utd
Quaresma from Sporting to Man Utd
Duff from Blackburn to Liverpool
Milito from Independiente to Leeds
Les Ferdinand from Tottenham to Portsmouth
Rebrov from Tottenham to Fulham/Birmingham

Whilst the above are not carved in stone i understand that 'deals' for the above players are either complete or are very close to completion. We will see in 4 weeks time i guess.

*Inter Milan have apparently offered Man Utd £17 million for Giggs but im not sure of the source regarding this so i didnt include it with the others.

The 1st transfer i mentioned has been made official...

Ferdinand Coly of Lens has today (Friday) officialy signed for Birmingham City in a 6 month loan deal with a view to a pernament move (£650-000) if City survive relegation this season.

Also Gareth Barry has again been linked with Blackburn with even stronger rumours this time complete with a fee mentioned (£10 million) Barry did not deny the transfer deal when asked.

Others i spoke about will become clearer in the coming days im sure.

Barry has probably been your best player this season so far (in my opinion) and this is probably why he is attracting alot of attention close to the transfer window, you may be pleased to hear that Owen Hargreaves is being spoken to by Villa (aswell as Arsenal) to replace Barry.

I heard that Blackburn wanted Gareth Barry, with a swap deal for Dunn. But I never knew that Tottenham were after him.

Hopefully Gareth Barry will stay at Villa, as he is one of our best players that we have.

Man Utd and Sporting are negotiating a 'link up' like the one Utd have with Anthwerp, so they have very good chance of signing Quaresma and with Carlos Querioz being a former Portugese manager, im sure he'll have some links to make sure things will go through smoothly.

Yes he is quality, and Juventus wanted him also.

The deal with Quaresma joining Man Utd was apparently done a while ago when Sporting signed chilean Pablo Contreras as his replacement.

Sporting sold Viana to Newcastle so didnt want to let Quaresma go until they had filled the gap, but now they have clearly just done that.

Aye, I'm fairly certain Quaresma is on his way - a good prospect for the future.

Yes the Man Utd squad is lacking the depth of yesteryear and is seriously flawed compared to that say of Arsenal, but remember that Quaresma from Sporting is joining (im 99.9% certain of this) there may well be a couple of Bossman signings too but ive not heard anything about those. Its common for a couple of transfers to get leaked early but never the full picture.

the Utd squad is thin enough as it is. I'd rather see consistent "good" players in, about 5-6 maybe, than have just one man come in, trip on the hotel carpet on his first night, and be injured for three months.

Absolutely right, but if for pure example that Man Utd had say 3 players all on £20,000 a week and all either under-achieving or not playing in the first team regualry enough then wouldnt that make sense to ship them out and get in 1 top player (like Ronaldinho) pay him the £60,000?

There would be no extra wage costs that way, seems viable to me.

Man Utd is very much a club for profit though, and Fergie's team has already demanded a lot in the way of wages in recent years. Both Keane and Beckham are on ludicrous amounts of money these days, and in order to keep a decent wages vs turnover ratio, Utd won't want to shell out a fortune on another prima donna.