Zoom Soccer reckon the club are preparing a club record bid of £25million. It's a ludricrous sum and we wouldn't expect anything to come of it at that price. Maybe they're getting their Marks and Pounds confused. The figure of DM 28million is mentioned as a minimum, but it seems likely that enough clubs would be interested for the eventual price to rise well above that.

Ballack is currently with our forthcoming Champs League opponents Bayer Leverkusen, and their chairman is quoted as saying that Arsenal have been given permission to talk to the player. It seems that they're resigned to selling him at the end of the season, and the word in Germany is (unsurprisingly) that his destination will be Munich (although Real Madrid and Barca are showing interest too).

This looks very much like one of those easy-to-make-up transfer stories, where a player has hit the headlines (in this case with crucial world-cup qualifying goals against Ukraine) and suddenly every big club in Europe is said to be desparate to sign them.

Not Arsenal, not for £25million anyway. Could be that Leverkusen are just trying to bump up whatever price they eventually get for him from Bayern Munich.