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Hot football transfer gossip: Wanyama, Adebayor, Cavani, Calhanoglu

Like a hungover morning after an unsuccessful night on the pull, today’s hot football transfer gossip is cold, lonely and full of regret. An uncomfortable reminder of desperate lunges and humiliating knockbacks. And it wasn’t even that heavy a night. Everyone was tucked up by 6pm. It’s just that we’re all getting a bit too old for this and we can’t stomach as many transfers as we could in the good old days.

So this is a story of what-might-have-beens, rather than the usual what-might-bes-but-probably-won'ts.

The club feeling most unloved this morning is Tottenham, whose attempts to pick up several players failed. As well as missing out on the unhappy Saido Berhaino, Spurs chairman Daniel Levy also offered Andros Townsend and Erik Lamela to Southampton in part-exchange for Victor Wanyama, reports the Standard. Why Levy thought the addition of Lamela would sweeten the deal is anyone’s guess, but anyway Saints said no.

Aston Villa realised too late that they needed a striker to adequately replace Christian Benteke, which is unfortunate given that they sold him six weeks ago. Tim Sherwood suffered rejection in his attempts to lure Dimitar Berbatov, Dwight Gayle and most entertainingly Emmanuel Adebayor, who refused to move to Birmingham because he was awaiting a sign from God to do so (The Telegraph).

Norwich were so desperate for a striker that they bid £8m for Gayle and Steven Naismith (that’s not £8m total, that’s £8m each!), but even sillier was that both offers were rejected. It meant the Canaries had to reluctantly turn down Bournemouth’s equally eye-popping £7m offer for Lewis Grabban.

It all makes Charlie Austin’s failure to find a suitor more baffling. A strapping young lad who everyone thought would clean up in the transfer deadline day meat market, the Guardian says that no club even bid for him in the past month.

Man Utd allegedly tried to appease fans dissatisfied with the signing of Anthony Martial by buying another player none of them had heard of. According to Turkish media, the Red Devils failed with a late £26.4m bid for Bayer Leverkusen midfielder Hakan Calhanoglu.

And last but by no means least, Arsenal. The Gunners ended the transfer window as the only club in Europe’s top five leagues not to have signed a first-team outfield player. The Mirror claims that they did make an enquiry for Edinson Cavani “in the last few days”, but that they didn’t fancy paying £50m for the Paris Saint-Germain striker. A bit like wandering into Marks and Spencer to do your weekly shop and then walking straight out because there’s nothing in the reduced section.

@darlingkevin