The Strange Case of David Nugent

After playing poorly in his first two games for Portsmouth and being on the bench for two more, it now appears that Lord Harry of Redknapp is prepared to sell David Nugent.

Having paid £4.5million only weeks ago, it seems ludicrous that any manager, even one as capricious (look it up) as Redknapp, would sell a player so quickly.

This, of course, has brought out the conspiracy theorists. Like this one from 'Mooney_Is_God' on BBC's 606 Forums :

"They paid 4.5 mill ish up front and will now sell to Billy D for 6 mill, leaving PNE 1.5 mill out of pocket. Billy fell out massively with PNE and ..... read between the lines. Poor dave nuge. All he wants to do is play. Should have stayed at PNE really."

However, what is even stranger is that it does appear that Derby are in the running to buy Nugent. How are they going to finance this ?

By selling Robert Earnshaw, the club's record signing that they themselves only bought 3 or 4 weeks ago.

The world of Premiership football gets weirder by the day.

Relegation Predictions Revisited

In June, I posted some completely groundless relegation predictions for the 2007-2008 Premiership football season.

I knew I was going to have to revisit these fairly early in the new Premiership season, as some clubs strengthen and others - inexplicably - weaken themselves.

One club determined to do the latter seems to be Bolton Wanderers. With rumours of Anelka's departure gathering momentum and manager Sammy Lee's determination to sideline their other true talent - El Hadj Diouf - I'm beginning to think that Bolton for relegation is a good bet.

On the other hand, Fulham - who had struggled to bring in the players they wanted in the early part of the transfer window - are now looking a fairly solid outfit. The additions of Chris Baird, Steve Davis and David Healy to Lawrie Sanchez' squad seems to have already made a difference. So, despite my earlier prediction, no relegation for Fulham.

I still think Wigan are vulnerable and Derby are doomed, so my bottom three are:

Bolton
Wigan
Derby

I'm going to stick with that until the Premiership football season finishes, if that's OK with you lot.