SIGNINGS - but it's not even deadline day!

So, at long last it appears as though decent football men are being cajoled into scribbling on THFC headed paperwork. About time too! I remember back in those heady days of late May/early June when the forums were ablaze with disgruntled Spurs fans bemoaning the lack of transfer activity - oh how I laughed! The only surprise for me is that we are a good week ahead of Levy's usual transfer dealing schedule.

Adebayor will be a welcome addition, particularly if it sees Crouchie shipped out. Ade is a decent player - mostly. Let's face it, he's no world beater; this isn't our "Aguero moment", but he is definitely better than Crouch, and for me that is good enough. It would be nice to sign another striker, but I don't see this happening, and even if it did I doubt there'd be much "wow" factor. Anyway, with just Adebayor, Defoe and Pav there might be a chance for someone like Harry Kane to sneak a few minutes here and there, and to be honest I'd rather see that than watch us throw silly money at someone average like Rodellaga.

Diarra's medical is allegedly in progress, and he's another one who we should be welcoming with open arms. He's a top player with plenty of experience at the highest level and will undoubtedly be better than Wilson, who one assumes is packing his bags and crying somewhere near Chigwell right now (It's ok Sarge, I went to Uni in Stoke, it's not as bad as it first looks).

In terms of improving the team you can't complain here can you? I mean these are 2 good players who made 22 and 39 appearances respectively for Real Madrid last season - yes that Real Madrid! I think once you become comfortable with the fact that the elite players - the best of the best, the £30m and over brigade - are out of our grasp (and will continue to be so until we either win the league or get bought by some questionable billionaire), then you have to look at the Adebayors and the Diarras of this world as probably as good as we can realistically expect to get. After all, it's better than Conor Wickham and Joey Barton, isn't it?

Today's other talk is of Joe Cole. Now I've just been reading loads of posts of the "no, no, no" persuasion, but I beg to differ. Liverpool have recently done a stock take which revealed 132 midfielders lurking in various corners of their training ground, and so may well look to do some business at around the £3m mark (yes, I just made that up) and if the player himself has any professional pride then he'd be crazy to expect another mega payday. He's made his money, if he wants to come and be involved he'd have to take what we offered: £50k a week (BOOM! There's another guess!).

Personally I think he has something to prove and I think Old Man Redknapp is the man to motivate him. I could see him standing in for VDV and/or dare I say Modric too. Left, right, centre, in the hole - Joe Cole on form would provide us good creative options from the bench in any of these positions. I think if the price is right this would be a very good move. He's only 29 for God's sake! Time will tell, but some deals just "make sense" for everyone involved - and this is one of them.

So, at the risk of jumping the gun, I say welcome to the new boys, fond farewells to the old and well done Daniel Levy. Now what you going to do for the next 7 days? Cahill or Samba?