The Best and Worst Transfers of 2009

So, that's the Premier League season pretty much over unless you're Newcastle or Hull after Middlesbrough all but relegated themselves yesterday. West Brom could play themselves back into contention for survival today but as they're at Liverpool, you can't really see it happening. So that's that, then, and for the majority of football fans, it's time for the interest on the pitch to fade away and the shouting and recriminations to begin off of it. Who were the best and worst signings of 2008/09? Who fired their team to glory and who should have just been fired?

Time to look at the five best and worst transfers of the 2008/09 Premier League Season:

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BEST:

Marouane Fellaini (Standard Liege > Everton): Goals, work rate, height, strength, speed, and a big bag of that certain X factor that creates cult figures and takes some of the work of geeing up the team off of Cahill. He might have cost £15m, but he's only 21 and settled into the Everton team right away, becoming one of their most important players almost immediately, something a lot of similarly-priced signings singularly failed to do.

Andrei Arshavin (Zenit St. Petersburg > Arsenal): While I don't quite buy into the hype just yet that Arshavin is the new Dennis Bergkamp despite his heroics at Liverpool - Rafa just has a tactical blind spot to Arsenal attacking midfielders after that absolute donkey Julio Baptista scored 4 past them as well a couple of years ago - the little Russian was certainly the kick-start Arsenal's season needed and the experienced creative spark they were lacking. The difference between Arsenal with Arshavin and without was night and day, plainly and painfully obvious in their lackluster Champions League performances.

Jonas Gutierrez (RCD Mallorca > Newcastle): He might have the haircut of a fifteen-year-old tomboy, but for all of Newcastle's problems this season, none of them have been down to this man. A talented winger with graft, it doesn't matter where he gets played across the midfield, because whereever you don't play him, he'll turn up there anyway. Often playing two positions because of the Toon's bizarre wing-back setup, he's been Newcastle's best player for most of the season. Shame he'll probably leave if they go down; they need him.

Wilson Palacios (Wigan > Tottenham): One of the major reasons behind Tottenham's turnaround in the second half of the season, he added presence where Zokora had previously just stood around marvelling at the opposition and Jenas couldn't see a thing out of his tiny face. Hopefully for him he'll come back fine next season after the killing of his brother, which obviously makes football seem incredibly unimportant.

Robbie Keane (Liverpool > Tottenham): Essentially got around £8m for a six month loan swap. You just argue with the good finances of that kind of deal.

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WORST:

David Bentley (Blackburn > Tottenham): Came in as Beckham's natural successor, went out being kept out of the team by Aaron Lennon's Gay Right Hand. The boy with the million dollar haircut, the billion dollar ego and the FarmFoods workrate spent a few games drifting around the pitch doing very little before vanishing back to the bench to be replaced by a player Spurs already had. What a pointless waste of fifteen million pounds.

Dimitar Berbatov (Tottenham > Manchester United): He's been good, but he's not been £30m of good. That alone wouldn't be enough to get him on this list, but the real reason is that the spending of £30m on Berbatov is the sole reason United can't splash the cash to keep Tevez, a younger, superior and hungrier player, creating the one incident in as long as I can remember that has seen the fans turn on The Big Red-Nosed One. They might regret this next year when Berbatov goes absent without leave when they're 1 - 0 down at Anfield.

Xisco (Deportivo La Coruna > Newcastle): Six million pounds of Spanish striking talent was scheduled to arrive at Newcastle in the summer, only for British Airways to accidentally ship it to Bangalore. Turning up at St. James' with high hopes only to find himself seventh-choice striker in a team embroiled in a bitter relegation battle, you have to wonder just how bad Xisco has to have been in training to find himself behind Shola Ameobi and The Man With 1,000 Haircuts, Andy Carroll. Not what you need when you cost six million pounds, your team's first choice strike force is about as robust as runny egg yolk, and your competition as backup is the player Cardiff didn't want out of Shola Ameobi and Michael Chopra.

Jimmy Bullard (Fulham > Hull): Poor Jimmy, this is through absolutely no fault of his own, but Hull really must be kicking themselves that they paid out £5m for Jimmy Bullard's one half of football. A battling midfielder of just the kind they needed, but not when he's sat on the treatment table, if Hull do go down, it might very well be because they spent most of their January cash on Jimmy's dodgy knee.

Robbie Keane (Tottenham > Liverpool): Essentially paid around £8m for a six month loan swap. You just argue with the poor finances of that kind of deal.

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Goodnight

I Have Discovered the Worst Song in the World

'We Are Rockstars' by Does It Offend You Yeah? is the worst song ever committed to master tape. It's also the most idiotic name in the history of music next to The Ting Tings, but let's not get into that and let's just solely deal with this one song, as if I extend this post to their entire existence I'm going to choke on my own bile and be found tomorrow morning dead in a puddle of my own vitriol, so let's get on with it.

I don't know if you've heard this song, but if you haven't, it's the one that was in the trailer for the new 'Fast and Furious' film. You know that two-second loop over and over again? That's the entire song. All of it. For four minutes. Having had the thing blasted into my cranium at about the same decibel level as standing next to a comet re-entering earth's atmosphere, I'm going to skip any amount of musical analysis or observation and instead dismiss the entire thing as, scientifically speaking, piss fucking awful. A song, clearly, for those who either have no ears to speak of or for some reason hark back endlessly to a time when their Sega Mega Drive would crash and get stuck playing an atrocious two-second loop of discordant sounds, only at fifty-seven thousand decibels. Absolutely hideous in every way, it is less a song and more a collection of obnoxious noises; a four-minute all-out assault on the senses. It rapes the aural canal with all the care and finesse of a prison gang and the vocals, while atrocious, are sweet relief from the aural onslaught in the same way some heavy ball-torture would be sweet relief from six hours of someone trying to push a dog up your arse.

I am not adverse, as I'm sure some of you now believe, to electronic music provided it's actually music. One of the highlights of any evening for me is Pendulum, which I'm led to believe is Australian drum and bass, even though it's actually quite nice and has a trumpet instead of someone talking unintelligibly about having something called riddim which is, from casual observation, a complete lack of rhythm attempting to be made up for with a silly voice and gratuitous misplaced faith in one's own musical ability. I've criticised The Ting Tings in the past for making heroically trite and awful music, but at least it still vaguely passes for music, in that even though he never stops banging that one big fucking drum, we should probably give him some points for trying.

This song, however, does not. If it is trying to do anything, it is, as the band's name suggests, trying to offend people. This must be their aim, it simply has to be, simply because I cannot believe that anyone with any love for the world would willingly create something so absolutely despicable and not immediately burn their Korgs to destroy it. The same two-second loop of awful deliberately discordant noise over and over again for what feels like an hour and a half is enough to drive any rational man to delivering vicious blows to his own face in a desperate bid to make it stop and, if the rumours of Guantanamo Bay blasting awful music at suspected Taliban prisoners are true, the only reason this wouldn't be on the playlist is because exposure to it would probably drive any suspect irretreievably insane far beyond any chance of extracting information.

I'm a rational man, and I do, in all things, try to apply logic and reason to what I see and hear around me. I'm not one to hate, honestly, and definitely one to look for the good side, the merits of whatever it is I'm looking at. Not this. I hate it. I hate it with every fibre of my being. My soul burns and crackles with wicked green flames at the very thought of it. It is a hate that consumes me. Somehow, this song has tapped into a part of my primal sub-brain that had lain dormant for millennia and, much as our cave-dwelling ancestors were likely driven to stamp out and destroy rival tribes, I am possessed with a great need to, upon hearing the very first chord, slam the jagged neck of a broken bottle into both ears and give the subwoofer a good shoeing. I firmly believe that, somehow, this band have discovered the sound that simply switches off our higher brain functions, turning us into dancing, seizing idiots or, like me, into flailing, hateful gibbons. It is aural brain damage, neuron death in musical form, and prolonged exposure would likely reduce rational men to beating the earth with sticks. I hate it, and you, I hate you for liking it.

Now I'm going to have a lie down until I'm all back to normal.

Goodnight.

Hatton Found Out as Pacquiao Reigns Supreme

So Hatton was found out again. With seconds left of the second round, having already been floored twice in the first, Manny Pacquiao floored him with a massive left that kept him down long after the count and well into the pound-for-pound king's celebrations. You can argue that the Filipino should have been more concerned about his opponent and should not have been celebrating until Hatton was off the canvas, but completely dismantling a bigger, heavier man, himself ranked well into the top 10 pound for pound fighters, and with such a dominant performance, too, must be a difficult thing not to celebrate.

How did it happen, though? Defeat against Floyd Mayweather could be excused as the brash American - now coming out of retirement to fight Juan Manuel Marquez - was the bigger man, his shots too powerful for Hatton in the stand-up straight-line fight Hatton brings into every bout. Not so much pound for pound as punch for punch, Mayweather won by being the more physically powerful and having the experience of a career full of heavier hitters than the Mancunian - at least, that's the excuse you could make.

Hatton, this time, was caught out by nothing but his own naivety. The knockout punch, while impressive in power, was not a technical marvel. Hatton walked into it with his hands down and, crucially, his mouth wide open, a target begging to be hit by the lightning-fast Pacquiao. Twice in the first round he had advanced on Pacquiao and been floored by a flurry of lefts and rights flying faster than I could count them, and Hatton didn't learn. He was defeated by his own shortcomings against Mayweather, also. A ferocious hitter on the attack, he has now been defeated twice - counted out on the canvas twice - by flaws in his own defence. This time, there can be no excuse.

Is, as many people say, Hatton's career over? No, of course not. Barely 30 and having lost none of his attacking strength, he can go on for years. As others might put it, he can still bang. His two defeats have come against Hall of Famers and the two greatest pound-for-pound boxers in recent years. There is no shame, so they say, in losing to the best, and at the time he has fought them, both Mayweather and Pacquiao have been the best, of any weight class, in world boxing. I still think Hatton is top ten, but only if he learns to fight like a boxer and less like a street brawler - his trainer, Floyd Mayweather Snr, will, if the rumours are true, be fired from Team Hatton today, and he has been the only one trying to get Hatton to move his head more, to move his body more, to think about his body and his guard rather than just throwing his fists; getting rid of him before he learns - if he indeed can learn - would be criminal.

Hatton's guard was non-existent last night. You could argue that, against a smaller man, he was overconfident and felt he didn't need to protect himself, but he learned a hard lesson last night, and careful observers would have noticed it disappeared against Mayweather as well. Too easily drawn into a brawl with no guard, he will always be found out by top class opposition and that will be the downfall of his legacy - he's 30 now, he cannot take the shots he used to be able to, and the pound for pound kings are there, mostly, because for their weight class, they hit like dump trucks. He's no John Duddy, who's chin is less made of granite and more protected by a Star Trek style force field, able to get pinged in the face all day and come out smiling. He needs to protect himself.

Hatton has the skills, and still has the time to make them count, but he was outclassed last night - he looked for all the world like a bar drunkard taking swings at a master. He would throw and throw and throw, miss, and Pacquiao would wallop him with an expertly-aimed flurry that, more often than not, looked likely to floor Hatton. Men with lesser chins would have been down more in the first and the fight would have been halted, but it was obvious from the first minute that it wouldn't go past the third - that seemed to be what both men wanted. Hatton just wanted it too much, and forgot, if he ever learned, the lessons taught to him by two generations of Mayweathers.

Can he come back from this? Of course he can. But only if, this time, he learns.

On the plus side, the undercard and the bouts in the north-east were also impressive. In Sunderland, Danny Williams defeated John McDermott, this time far less controversially than their first bout last July, but serious questions have to be raised about Williams' career when he has twice been taken the distance - and to a split decision - by a man who is essentially just a lump who Matt Skelton, at the same age Williams is now, knocked out in the first round.

I will go out on not much of a limb here and say I have never liked Danny Williams - for full disclosure, I feel he's a dirty fighter and a cheat who's claim to fame at knocking out a badly aging Tyson was shown up by a classy Vitaly Klitschko and later by the tragically bad Audley Harrison - but no fighter with any claim to a world title shot should be being taken the distance, twice, by a lump from Basildon who's power comes from work on the pasties rather than pads, and they certainly shouldn't need to hold and cheat as Williams was last night to do it.

Tony Jeffries was impressive in front of a home crowd, having his fight stopped after having downed his opponent three times in the first and continuing the onslaught into the second with absolutely no reply, though - whisper it quietly in certain parts of the north-east - the Sunderland boy wasn't the highlight; that honour went to European Light-Middleweight champion Jamie Moore, who's power and skill in defeating Ukranian Roman Dzuman inside two rounds was hugely impressive and surely puts him into the world title picture in a very sparse division.

On the Vegas undercard there was a future world champion on show - Matt Korborov, who might have been only fighting journeyman Anthony Bartinelli, but did it in such style and picked every shot with such poise that I can't think he'll be anything other than a great fighter. A boxer with strength who puts so much thought into his shots is a rare commodity, and you could see him throughout the fight looking for openings, probing for gaps and then striking with serious power. Super-middleweight is such an empty division as well, and I'd love to see him fight Carl Froch.

Other than that, being up until 5 in the morning has taken it right out of me, I'm off for some breakfast.

Good morning.