Eric Cantona, Fawlty Towers, Wetherspoon's employee-of-the-month ... sometimes, readers, it's all about knowing when to call time. And it looks like Manchester City, 483 points off the lead in the Premier League, have decided enough is enough and Roberto Mancini will start rebuilding for next season by spending a lot of money on a lot of players. Having said that, he'd have done so even if City had won the league, Champions League, FA Cup, Community Shield, Zenith Data Systems Cup and the Oscar for best sound editing (unlucky Ben Burtt), but we digress.
Roberto's first port of call, will be an actual port: Napoli. There he'll snap up alleged inventor of the lightbulb, Thomas "Edinson" Cavani, before taking the boat to Glasgow where he'll buy Celtic midfielder and popular Japanese eatery Victor "Why does everyone always go for the chicken katsu curry?" Wagamama. Those two deals should set City back just north of £50m. If Mancini thinks he can rock on up to Milan and sign Stephan El Shaarawy though, he has another thing coming. The striker, also a target for Arsenal, has signed a contract that will keep him at the San Siro – literally, under its terms he can't step further than 25 feet outside the stadium – until 2018.
David Luiz is a defender (and a midfielder if you ask him nicely) who can pass a bit, and therefore must be eliminated from English football as soon as possible. Luckily, Barcelona are considering a bid for the Brazilian in the summer, according to today's Daily Star.
Hey! Mike Tyson is a Wolves fan. "I don't know that much about football but it sounds like Wolverhampton have a manager who can turn the team around. [Tyson's English sparring partner] Joe [Egan] is going to let me know how they get on. When I'm over in England I would like to see them in action." You probably don't, Mike.
Brendan Rodgers has noticed 19-year-old Sampdoria striker Mauro Icardi has got a 9.3 review on Pitchfork, even though the review uses long words and he doesn't get all the references to late 90s electro-pop singles. Still, it's enough for him to consider making a bid come the summer. He'll have competition though: Inter, Spurs and, you guessed it, Man City are also interested.
Sunderland are monitoring Zambia centre-half and nominative determinism posterboy Stoppila Sunzu.
The man with the best byline photo on Fleet Street, reckons Gary Hooper would quite like to join Spurs, should he leave Celtic in the summer. The price tag is a cool £10. Oh, sorry, £10m. Spurs look set to miss out on Brazilian striker Leandro Damiao though. His agent tells the Daily Star that: "the Italian championship is a goal for Damiao".
It's a Thursday so Thierry Henry, 43, has been quoted as saying he'd quite like to go on holiday to Arsenal for a bit. "That would be a desire, more a desire than something that can be officialised, I still have two years playing here and then I will see," he said. You heard it officialised here first. Actually, the Daily Mail may have officialised it first because that's where we nicked the quotes from.
Oh, and if you want more Michael Laudrup in your life, you're in for some good news. The Swansea manager's contract is due to expire at the end of next season but he's about to enter talks to add another 12 months on to the deal. "Yes, Swansea has a strong interest in extending Michael Laudrup's contract," his agent told Denmark's Ekstra Bladet. "In the coming days, we will meet with Swansea and discuss the possibility of an extension."
