Readers, some shock news. With reports of slave labour rocking the world of football in recent weeks as preparations for the 2022 World Cup get underway, the Mill would like to shift the spotlight closer to home. For it has been sensationally revealed that, here in England – in West Bromwich, in fact – this sort of thing is going on beneath our very noses. Because, at the town's football club, there is a 20-year-old striker who is earning a paltry £12,848 a year more than the UK's national average wage. Or, to put it another way, he is earning just £33,737 a year more than a 20-year-old might make in full employment on the minimum wage. This is a scandal.
For, via a scoop from our brave, campaigning colleagues at the Mirror, news has arrived that Saido Berahino, West Brom's match-winner against Manchester United, must face the daily indignity of going to work for just £850 a week – a paltry £44,200 a year. Ashley Cole is said to be gripping his steering wheel heroically in a bid not to swerve off the road. It's why the likes of Manchester United, Arsenal and Everton are mounting a campaign to release Berahino from the shackles of his Baggies oppression. Another man teetering dangerously close to the West Bromwich Albion slave machine is Morgan Amalfitano. Currently on loan there from Marseille, he impressed Steve Clarke so sufficiently when he sashayed through the entire Manchester United back four at the weekend that the slave boss wants to make his move a permanent one. Somewhere, William Wilberforce is stirring in his grave.
Elsewhere, Kevin De Bruyne will be filing a workplace personal injury claim after being axed from the Chelsea squad. An axe! In the Chelsea dressing room! Did they learn nothing from the whole Ashley Cole shooting a workie farrago? Anyway, news of this axing has apparently led to De Bruyne looking for a loan move. José Mourinho's frankly unwise policy of swishing axes around is set to have consequences for César Azpilicueta too, who may find himself packed off to Barcelona to be replaced by £7m Ajax defender Ricardo van Rhijn. Meanwhile John Terry is set to be, as the parlance goes, 'rewarded' with a new contract, something which he will no doubt 'pen'.
In Sunderland, Ellis Short is responding to the fact that he has removed Paolo Di Canio (a man who, if this is to be believed , has the remarkable ability of spitting on his own face), by attempting to sign his polar opposites in the flamboyance stakes. Steve McClaren and Tony Pulis are emerging as the frontrunners for the hotseat there. Gus Poyet, though, is said to have fallen down the pecking order – perhaps due to the fact that Short has requested his references from Paul Barber, the man who sacked him at both Spurs and Brighton. McClaren might, however, sign up for the Derby County job presumably because his last managerial stint in the East Midlands went so well.
At Anfield, Brendon Rodgers has planted two feet firmly on the ground, lowered his centre of gravity and is thus prepared to brace himself for a bid from Atlético Madrid for Philippe Coutinho. At Old Trafford, David Moyes has so many problems mounting up that he'll no doubt not even notice when Shinji Kagawa slips out of the door in January and does one back to Borussia Dortmund. Roberto Mancini is in talks with Galatasaray about bringing his trademark bonhomie to Turkey.
And finally, Jay Simpson – a man whose first senior Arsenal appearance came when he replaced Nicklas Bendtner, perhaps proving that there's no real substitute for Nicklas Bendtner – has finally secured his dream move. The former Arsenal, West Brom and Hull striker has signed for Thailand's Buriram United on what is being reported as a record £39,000-a-month deal. And so, as The Mill draws wheezingly to an end, it is delighted to be able to offer Saido Berahino this crumb of comfort. Perhaps if he ever does manage to cast off his West Brom yoke, he too might follow in Simpson's footsteps to this land of milk and honey.
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