David Moyes Would Stab a Sheffield Baby For Kicks

With one month left in the transfer window, let’s take a look at how each team has approached and fared in this summer’s silly-season.

Arsenal
Arsenal signed Croatia’s most lethal striker, Eduardo da Silva, which for the longest time would have been a statement to strike fear throughout the Balkans. In addition Arsene Wenger completed the signing of Auxerre right-back Bacary Sagna. The Frenchman will compete with Emmanuel Eboué to perform the Herculean effort of making Justin Hoyte look like the only capable Englishman that Arsene Wenger has ever signed.

Aston Villa
Aston Villa's second major signing of the summer, should eventually follow their first major signing. Until then Villa fans must somehow muster the cognitive dissonance required to imagine two West Ham castoffs will help their squad stave off a relegation battle.

Birmingham City
Steve Bruce has procured the services of many of Arsenal’s young guns such as Fabrice Muamba and Sebastian Larrson in their run up to runner-up in the Championship. How Birmingham had captured some of these kids from Arsenal was a mystery that only revealed itself this past month. Part of the deal must have included annoying the living crap out of Tottenham. Steve Bruce proved to be up to the challenge by buying both Mido and Hassam Ghaly from Martin Jol only to ship them back after the Champaign had been opened.

Blackburn
Blackburn has done little aside from landing Paraguayan international Roche Santa Cruz. The club driver was so rusty due to Mark Hughes’ immobility in the transfer market that he mistakenly delivered Santa Cruz to a local Rugby club for his first practice. There he was subjected to hair-pulling, eye-gouging, hand-bagging and a finger in the wrong spot. When asked about the mix-up, Santa Cruz lamented “I wondered why Mark Hughes would have such an easy practice.”

Bolton
Sammy Lee has moved to show the distinction between himself and his predecessor Sam Allardyce. “Big” Sam was known for securing transfers for aging or unwanted talented players. “Oopaloompa” Sam has taken a different approach by signing young players lacking any resemblance to talent, including Hungarian U21 goalkeeper Adam Bogdan and Norse winger Daniel Braaten.

Chelsea
At first, Cheslea were quite quiet in the transfer market, overpaying for Tal Ben Haim, Steve Sidwell and Claudio Pizarro. Not content with that waste of money, Chelsea opened the wallet for left winger Flourent Malouda from Lyon. His addition will undoubtedly lead to more speculation about Arjen Robben's future, which means squeaky bum time for all of the extra physios at Stamford Bridge.

Derby County
Derby County splashed the cash on record signing Robert Earnshaw for £3.5 million. Earnshaw is best known for being the first player to score a hat-trick at all four levels of English football. He will be assured of completing another hat-trick when he helps his 3rd team get relegated.

Everton
David Moyes proved to be a heartless bastard when it came to Sheffield United. He never supported their bid to stay up. Then to make matters worse he took their best defender Phil Jagielka for a palty £4 million. And finally he took back the £4 million and gave the Blades James Beattie, who will continue his career of making defenders look good. Shame on you David Moyes!

Fulham
Fulham manager Lawrie Sanchez signed Leeds’ striker David Healey, Villa’s Steven Davis and Aaron Hughes and Southampton’s Chris Baird in a move to replace the odd minority of Americans at the West London club with an odd minority of Northern Irishmen. He also signed West Ham’s Paul Konchesky. The left-back has crossed over the city from West Ham in order to fulfill his dream of Championship football, having been robbed of the chance by FA incompetence. Upon putting to pen to paper, Sanchez was quick to look at his atlas to figure out which of the six counties contain Konchesky’s hometown of Barking.

Liverpool
Rafa Benitez, other that being able to eat his weight in pork products, proved his humanitarianism by taking Tom Hicks’ money, which would have been spent to rig more elections in the US, and wasting it on El Niño, Fernando Torres. Fernando Torres will do at £27 million, what Ryan Babel could do for £11 million or even Andrew Voronin could do for £0: be overwhelmed by the physicality and speed of the premiership and wash out. Torres will at least be a trivia answer.

Mancheser City
Sven Goran Erikkson was a busy and cosmopolitan manager. He bought Spanish defender Javi Garrido, Croatian defender Vedran Corluka, Bulgarian headache Valeri Bojinov, Brazilian midfielder Elano and Italian striker Rolando Bianchi to the City of Manchester Stadium. Using only YouTube and Football Manager as a guide, he has rebuilt his squad in little time from every corner of the globe. In addition, he has secured a large percentage of the European Commission’s 1,300 translators to help him teach his diverse new players such phrases as “pass it square”, “everyone behind the ball” and “38 draws should keep us up.”

Manchester United
While Sir Alex has made many big signings this past off-season, only one can be said to be part Kleberson and part Bo Derek.

Middlesbrough
Middlesbrough made their big splash in a dry lake bed by picking up halfback Luke Young. His secret desire to leave Charlton Athletic came true when his former club agreed to a fee of £2.5 million with Gareth Southgate. Upon being introduced by the club to the fans, Young did what Luke Young does best and handed in his transfer request.

Newcastle United
Sam Allardyce must be forgiven if old habits die hard. He started the off-season by gathering in free transfers on useless castaways before he realized he had left Bolton and could afford to pay good dosh on a bunch of useless castaways.

Pompey
Portsmouth retooled its forward line with the signings of David Nugent from Preston North End and John Utaka from Rennes. The Sun was absolutely giddy at the prospect of using the latter's name in the headlines on the back page and commissioned the headline "Utaka the high road, Harry tells his striker" to be used after their reporters’ dog the Nigerian striker into snapping.

Reading
Manager Steve Coppell informed reporters and fans that he had fallen asleep in his favorite chair after the grind of last season’s 8th place finish for the small club. He woke up sometime around August 1st. He has asked the club to give him a wake up call in the future to ensure that such an event doesn’t reoccur. When asked, his wife admitted “I would have woken him but I didn’t know he was asleep. Stevie’s always like that.”

Sunderland
Roy Keane began the epic task of building for next year’s Championship title by raiding the 2nd tier of English football for all of its semi-prized assets. He picked up the Nigerian Roy Keane in Dickson Etuhu as well as Paul McShane and some guy named Chopra, but not the famous one that will sell you self-esteem. Not content with England, he has begun raiding the 2nd division that is the SPL by splashing a record amount on the Scottish #1 Craig Gordon, because Hungary’s #2 is a proposition that few can form a song around.

Tottenham Hotspur
Tottenham signed Kevin-Prince Boateng from Hertha Berlin for £4.5 million. The attacking midfielder, the self-proclaimed “ghetto” kid, will look to live up to that moniker by being a dilapidated, graffiti-laden and ignored part of an otherwise respectable summer signing spree by Martin Jol’s side. There is still time for the Spurs’ infamous 11th hour signings which have landed them such speculation stalwarts as Hossam Ghaly, Mido and Danny Murphy in the past two year.

West Ham United
Julien Faubert dreams of never playing at Upton Park drew closer than ever thanks to his ruptured Achilles tendon. No word yet has been received about the whereabouts of fellow disgruntled signing Craig Bellamy at the time of the incident, although fellow of waste of human flesh Scott Parker distinctly heard someone yell “Fore!”

Wigan
Wigan beat out Everton and Aston Villa for the signature of West Brom's Welsh international Jason Koumas. The 27 year old creative midfielder came up through the Liverpool academy with Michael Owen and Stephen Gerrard. Unlike Owen and Gerrard, he is craptacular, which is why Villa and the Toffies were beaten out by Wigan for the signature of anyone.