Monday's Football Transfer Rumours: Sven-goran Eriksson to Chelsea?

There is a tendency to overreact these days. According to newspaper reports this morning, Lewis Hamilton considered leaving formula one just because his team encouraged him to tell a few porkies after the Australian grand prix. Arsène Wenger, meanwhile, thinks Arsenal can't win the league, just because his side are 10 points off the pace with seven games to play, and Catholic priests are being told not to say "good morning" at the start of their services, just because … well … perhaps it's best to let the quotes speak for themselves.

"People might argue that if you go into a house, you say 'hi', but the priest is not going in to a house. He is going in to a sacred service," explained a spokesman for the diocese of Leeds. "Are we doing a cabaret or are we actually celebrating the Eucharist? The interpretation of the liturgy leads to unsuitable things, like strobe lights and girls in hotpants."

Thankfully Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich is a more level-headed sort. He decided some time ago that he wanted to appoint Sven-Goran Eriksson as his club's manager, and he won't allow himself to be put off by such trivialities as the Swede's consistent failure to living up to billing in any of his last three jobs. Indeed, such is Abramovich's confidence in Eriksson, that he will furnish the manager with £40m of his hard-earned and send him off into the transfer markets with instructions to bring back Inter full-back Maicon and Middlesbrough's Adam Johnson.

Manchester United, on the other hand, will presumably realize sooner or later that the only appropriate way to find Suralex's successor would be via the medium of an Apprentice-style reality TV show. Expect David Moyes to emerge victorious, but only after impressing the man he hopes to succeed by taking Jermaine Jenas to Everton.

Elsewhere, Arsenal are plotting to snap up Gonzalo Higuaín when Robin van Persie does one in the summer, and Amr Zaki is off to Newcastle.