Football transfer rumours: Carlton Cole to Liverpool?

Misplaced optimism comes in myriad forms. It might be a commissioning editor – a self-styled maverick, perhaps, who insists on being called The Big Easy –announcing that Eldorado is "the future of television, peeps". It might be the Mill splashing on industrial quantities of Joop and a challengingly tight floral shirt before heading off to Chassers for student night. Or it might be Rafael Benítez and Sir Alex Ferguson, managers of clubs with approximately no pots to do a No1 in, eyeing up expensive players. This morning's grapevine juice – freshly squeezed and chilled at precisely 1.2 degrees – is that Benítez has pulled himself away from the Coinstar machine at his local Aldi in Liverpool for long enough to leer lovingly in the direction of Sampdoria striker Giampaolo Pazzini , Sevilla winger Jesús Navas and Carlton Cole . Cole is also wanted by Aston Villa and Birmingham. Indeed, Birmingham manager Alex McLeish is so keen to ward off second-season syndrome that he has bid for 247 different players – including £8m for Wigan winger Charles Insomnia – and employed a crack team of researchers to assess whether it's worth Birmingham bothering to turn up next season, given the crushing inevitability of said syndrome. West Ham United will replace Cole with Everton unit Yakubu . They may bring in Lyon's Sidney Govou, too, just because they can. As for Lord Ferg, he is living, youse ing, empurpled proof that obsession need not be narrow-minded. Having spent years sniffing like an unfeasibly zesty dog around one Lyon starlet, Karim Benzema , he is now pursuing another: Benzema's old chum Hatem Ben Arfa . Ferguson has also made enquiries about Benfica's magisterial left-winger Angel di Maria , apparently ignoring the fact that, whatever he bids, Real Madrid/Manchester City will double, and then treble, and then multiply by £4.7m. In an unrelated and essentially hilarious development, Neil Lennon plans to make Crystal Palace's Darren Ambrose his first big signing if he gets the Celtic job. Finally, there is a rumour going round that England won the World Cup yesterday : deservedly, emphatically, brilliantly, humbly. We've heard some nonsense in our time, but this takes the biscuit.