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Damiao could be on his way to Spurs. Andre Penner/AP/Press Association Images
Ins and outs

The Departures Lounge: your daily lunchtime transfer round-up

Find out why Nasri preferred City over United, which player has said he doesn’t want to join Tottenham in a bid to convince the club to offer him higher wages and who stands to make £600,000 from Joey Barton’s QPR move.

I SHALL START today with a sentence that most newspapers have used with increasing regularity in recent months: Joey Barton has said x on Twitter.

Sorry to jump on the bandwagon, but in fairness, the Newcastle player never fails to keep us entertained.

First, he said he was staying with Newcastle, before some unwise words got him transfer-listed. He then claimed he was more or less going to QPR, and now it seems he is having second thoughts, with the news that he will decide today where his future lies.

For such an inconsequential player, he really is great at milking his fame.

One person who’ll be hoping Barton does move is his agent Willie McKay, who is set to make £600,000 if the deal is sealed. For doing what precisely? We’ll have to get back to you on that one, given that Barton did a fairly good job engineering the move himself, if indeed it does occur.

Samir Nasri has said Man City were always his first choice as they are “a club of the future”. He has thus avoided becoming the first player ever to admit that a club he has recently signed for wasn’t his preferred destination.

According to Guilleme Balague’s consistently informative Twitter feed, Lassana Diarra reportedly only rejected Tottenham’s advances in a bid to persuade them to offer higher wages… Of course, he’ll subsequently describe how it has always been a dream of his to join the club and insist that his move was in no way motivated by money.

Finally, Newcastle will move for Lens defender Darnel Situ, not to be confused with the similarly (and funnily) named QPR centre back Danny Shittu.

Ill-advised prospective deal of the day: Looks like Darron Gibson’s move to Villa might have hit a snag. Oh well, I have a feeling he would just have been joining Stephen Ireland on the bench anyway, unless he has suddenly learned to be good at things other than shooting.

Advised prospective deal of the day: Tottenham could do with another striker if they want to break down the mighty Shamrock Rovers defence amongst others, and Leandro Damiao sounds like a promising player.

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