Final Whistle

Xabi Alonso in Liverpool's Red

Xabi Alonso yesterday became the next in a long list of summer 2009 transfers made by Real Madrid in their effort to prevent Barcelona repeating their excellent treble of last season.

The £30million paid to Liverpool for Alonso takes the club’s summer spending beyond the sensible £200million mark for one summer – after having signed Kaka and Cristiano Ronaldo for more than a bag of sweeties costs. Recession? What recession?

Yesterday also saw the completion of the Darren Bent to Sunderland from Tottenham Hotspur deal for £10million – it is hoped that the player can finally find somewhere to settle for more than a year or two this time and string together, once more, the sort of form which saw him capped and scoring for England not too long ago.

In any case, with the new Premier League season just over the brow of the nearest hill now, I thought it was time to explain all of the summer’s big ins and outs to date in a nice orderly list so that you can keep track of these things:

The list is in reverse date order – working back from now to the point where we all lose interest.

• Xabi Alonso (Liverpool to Real Madrid) fee £30m
• Darren Bent (Tottenham to Sunderland) fee £10m
• Frederic Piquionne (Lyon to Portsmouth) on loan
• Mido (Middlesbrough to Zamalek) on loan
• Franco di Santo (Chelsea to Blackburn) on loan
• Leroy Lita (unattached to Middlesbrough)
• Steve Finnan (Espanyol to Portsmouth)
• Elano (Manchester City to Galatasaray) fee undisclosed
• Kolo Toure (Arsenal to Manchester City) fee undisclosed
• Peter Crouch (Portsmouth to Tottenham) fee undisclosed
• Zat Knight (Aston Villa to Bolton) fee undisclosed
• Sam Ricketts (Hull to Bolton) fee undisclosed
• Dean Whitehead (Sunderland to Stoke) fee £3m
• Ched Evans (Man City to Sheff Utd) fee £3m
• Felipe Caicedo (Manchester City to Sporting Lisbon) on loan
• James McCarthy (Hamilton to Wigan) fee £1.2m
• Mame Biram Diouf (Molde to Manchester United) fee undisclosed (player then immediately loaned back to Molde)
• Stewart Downing (Middlesbrough to Aston Villa) fee £12m
• Carlos Tevez (local investors club to Man City) fee £25m
• Fraizer Campbell (Manchester United to Sunderland) fee £3.5m
• Gelson Fernandes (Manchester City to St Etienne) fee undisclosed
• Gabriel Obertan (Bordeaux to Manchester Utd) fee undisclosed
• Michael Owen (unattached to Man Utd) Free
• Cristiano Ronaldo (Man Utd to Real Madrid) fee £80m

Phew, and that isn’t event the half of it! As ever, active teams have been Manchester based as Man United have shifted high value players out and bought in good young ‘uns (and picked up Michael Owen on a free transfer) – the money men will be pleased.

Over in the Blue half of the City, however, they have been spend spend spending again and Mark Hughes’ cheque book is glowing. They’ve also shifted a number of high quality but not quite world class players off their books so they’re making some solid signals of intent. It’s also pretty interesting that they’ve moved on to signing top quality centre halves rather than just buying every Brazilian available.

Tottenham Hotspur have performed a quite baffling array of transfers as the arch wheeler dealer Harry Redknapp looks to get a grip of this unwieldy squad of underachievers. Bringing in Peter Crouch to partner his other gang of tried and tested looks to be a positive move – and one which will pay dividends for the club (in this case, ‘dividends’ = ‘goals,’ right).

Lower down the league ladders, clubs like MK Dons, Nottingham Forest and their rivals Notts County are making moves to strengthen squads.

Relegated Newcastle and Middlesbrough have taken several hits  as they look to cut down massive wage bills and prepare a squad that can get them out of the tricky Championship – I’d bet on at least one of the two teams failing to make it back up at the first attempt.

I can’t wait for the 31st August when all this transfer maddness has calmed down and we can get used, for a few months at least, to who plays for who!