Football transfer rumours: Bordeaux's Marouane Chamakh to Arsenal?

Another day, another litany of increasingly tedious, half-baked accounts of one highly paid footballer's loyalty and questionable moral fortitude. Will we ever tire of it? Will it ever end? Apparently not, for Marouane Chamakh , a Rumour Mill staple since last summer, has announced that, contrary to anything he may have said or not said last week, the week before that, or in any of the preceding months, he would rather go to Arsenal than Liverpool. It is well documented that the Bordeaux and Morocco striker is a free agent at the end of this season and is looking for a lucrative move, but despite reports that he had already promised his services to Liverpool, Chamakh said over the weekend that: "My choice is to join a Premier League club. If I had a choice I would go to Arsenal." Of course there's always the possibility that this preference was aired between Liverpool's win over Everton and Arsenal's mullering at the hands of Chelsea , a window in which Chamakh would have had time to reflect on the violent shoeing he could look forward to receiving on the occasion of his first Merseyside derby, before deciding that he'd rather go somewhere where such violence is frowned upon, unless you happen to be dishing it out. If that's the case, Chamakh may well have changed his mind in the wake of seeing Arsenal get humbled by Chelsea, a state of affairs that means we may not have heard the last of the Chamakh saga. Wherever he ends up, he'd better be good. In Spain, Sport claims that Cesc Fábregas will pile the hurt on Arsenal fans by moving to Barcelona during the summer, despite his manager's craven attempts to keep him at the Emirates by writing increasingly large numbers on a piece of paper and sliding it across the table for his orchestra conductor to consider. Sport has declared that "economic issues" are not particularly high on Fábregas's list of priorities and that he'd like to move to the Camp Nou in the summer for a fee of €50m with a "minimum of fuss". That looks increasingly unlikely as this morning's edition of AS has claimed that Real Madrid are also interested in getting the player to ink a deal. However Sport suggests the Real Madrid president Florentino Pérez is realistic over the move and knows he is unlikely to lure the Arsenal captain to the Bernabéu. Whichever Spanish giant fails to sign Fábregas could console themselves and appease their fans by snapping up Bryan Hughes , the 33-year-old midfielder who has had his contract paid up by Hull City and is now a free agent on trial with Middlesbrough. James Vaughan also looks set to drop a division in his search for first-team football. The Everton striker, who is an England Under-21 international and the Premier League's youngest ever goalscorer, could be on his way back to Derby County, for whom he made two appearances during a month-long loan spell last year.