- guardian.co.uk, Friday October 10 2008 09.52 BST
Some ethereal sounding experimentalist elfin plinky-plonky types who think it's cool to play guitars with bows, yesterday. Photograph: PR
Iceland. They've bled us white, the bastards. They've taken everything we had, not just from us, from our fathers and from our fathers' fathers. And from our fathers' fathers' fathers. And from our fathers' fathers' fathers' fathers. They've taken money from our local councils, our police authorities and our fire services and put it in their high-yielding even-higher-risk savers accounts. And what have they ever given us in return? Nothing so useful as better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order … oh no. All they've given us in return is the now-deceased host of Mastermind and ethereal sounding experimentalist elfin plinky-plonky types who think it's cool to play guitars with bows.
Well now the chickens are coming home to roost, because the word in today's Star is that under-fire banker and West Ham owner Bjorgolfur Gudmundsson is ready to skip London town as the credit crunch threatens to blow his native country off the fiscal map. With two different parties, one of whom is Indian businessman and sixth richest man in the world Anil Ambani in talks with him about buying the Hammers, Gudmundsson will accept an offer of £100m for the club, which is exactly what he paid for it.
Elsewhere in London, Chelsea will have to move heaven and ear … well, Stamford Bridge and their Cobham training centre at least, if they're to realise their ambition of securing the scrawl of Ezequiel Lavezzi. Napoli's £10m-rated Argentine striker has said he has no intention of leaving Naples, because "I enjoy the sun and life at Napoli. I've nothing against London, but here it's marvellous."
Although its gangster quotient is similar, if not higher, the weather on Merseyside isn't as warm as in Naples. Nevertheless, Fernando Torres is also content with life at Liverpool, which means he'll decline the £200k-per-week carrot that Manchester City's people have been dangling carrot-like – unofficially, of course - in front of the young striker's people in the hope of getting him to up sticks to Middle Eastlands.
Arsène Wenger is licking his thumb and counting the notes of a £6m wad, which he will hand over to PSV Eindhoven in exchange for 22-year-old Dutch international utility midfielder, Ibrahim Afellay.
Darren Ambrose is not a £6m-rated Dutch midfielder and probably never will be, but that hasn't stopped suits at Ipswich Town discussing the possibility of tying a rope around the ankles, hitching him to the back of the club's standard tread 1948 Massey-Harris 50 and dragging him back home to Portman Road when his contract with Charlton expires in the summer. Out-of-favour Birmingham City winger/kind-of-striker Gary McSheffrey is another man who could find himself returning to an old haunt, as Coventry City are stepping up their efforts to bring him back to his hometown club.
But seeing as the Mill has started today's thrilling installment on an Icelandic-involvement-in-West Ham riff, we'll finish on an Icelandic-involvement-in-West Ham riff. As if the depressing ongoing saga of financial meltdown in the north Atlantic wasn't depressing enough for the club's owners, the news that Irons' right-back Valon Behrami is likely to be feeling subprime for quite some time after being clattered by his Swiss team-mate Gelson Fernandez at international training is unlikely to alleviate their gloom.
Björk Guomundsdóttir! Eidur Gudjohnsen! Magnús Magnússon! Miss World 1988! Sportacus! Hermann Hreidarsson! Leif Ericson! Miss World 2005! Sigur Rós! Heidar Helguson! Kerry Katona – can you hear me Kerry Katona!? Your banks took one hell of a beating! Your banks took one hell of a beating!
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