Lewis Carroll's 'Darius in Wonderland'

I hate the transfer window - the churning, torpid, yearly funeral procession characterised last year by the numbing ball-ache of Gareth 'I'm not half the player Xabi Alonso is' Barry's coquetteish skirt-lifting in the general direction of Rafael Benitez. The transfer window is traditionally the time when agents get hot under the collar and take centre stage, when Sky Sports news becomes even more inane and repetitive than usual, and the time when football fans have to cruelly delude themselves into believing that they care about whether Bolton really will go through with their (free) swoop for Sean Davis (a surefire addition to the canon of players that mutate from young and promising into hardened stalwart seemingly without the bit in the middle - c.f. Danny Cadamarteri, Francis Jeffers)

This year's transfer window has been lent a certain edge by Real Madrid's manic, Brewster's Millions-esque spending spree and the tragi-comic publishing (in the Daily Heil) of Michael Owen's debut novel, 'I'm Not Actually Dead'. But generally speaking: so far, so glum...

... until today. Something has happened that has utterly defied expectation, sense, logic and, frankly, belief. I can't decide whether its a Frank Capra fairytale or a David Lynch nightmare made flesh. Either way, we have travelled, as a nation, at the speed of lightning, through the looking glass.

The pictures will tell their own story;





Ladies and Gentlemen, your eyes do not deceive you. This sequence of pictures really does document a vast number of people associated with Turkish football club AnkaraGucu beside themselves with joy at the capture of Darius Vassell. That's Darius Vassell. Darius. Vassell. A thoroughly OK striker with a pretty poor goals to games ratio, and no discernible star quality.

To be honest there is nothing I can add to the pictures. I'm mystified. Clearly, Darius (if the slogan above is to be believed) is more than a player. I just don't know what.

I'll leave you now to try and figure out this in your own sweet time. I'll be doing the same. E-mail any responses or comments to hotrant@gmail.com
AC