TODAY has seen a flurry of rumours and counter-rumours that could really change the face of our strike-force for next season.

For the sake of clarity, I'll go through each one, wittily dismissing each in turn as utter drivel.

Raul to swap the Bernabeu for the burger van (on Northumberland Park)
Apparently, Spurs are on the verge of signing the original Galactico and net-bulger extraordinaire Raul.

There's no doubt that he's a class act, as you don't score more than 300 goals for a club and become your country's all-time leader scorer for nothing.

The trouble is, he's also about 45 (okay, he's 33, but still...) and as such lacks the pace and, one would think, the inclination to bang them in for us.

He's slipped down the pecking order at Real and although he made 30 appearances last term, a lot of those were from the bench and he only scored five times.

A few years ago we signed once-legendary Dutch midfielder Edgar Davids and he spent a season mistiming tackles all across the park, so unless we fancy giving our ball-boys a good work out we should let this one slide.

If you've got an eye for goal and a good footballing brain age isn't the barrier it should be (just ask a certain Teddy Sheringham) but for me, all signs point to no.

Pavlyuchenko to leave in 'player for foetus' deal
I don't care how good Sporting Lisbon's 15-year-old wondertoddler Bruma is, he's far too young to play in any of our top flight games and any deal to bring him in and send Pavs packing in the other direction would leave us one pubescent striker short of a decent squad.

By all means drop a million Euros or so and send him out to a decent side to build his experience, but letting our Russian hit-man go? I think not.

I've grown to rather like Pavs – perhaps only for the look of mad-eyed, vein-bulging exhilaration on his face when he came off the bench to score his first goal in about a decade for us last season – and I think he still has a part to play at the Lane.

Spurs enter race to sign Loic Remy
At the moment the prospect of signing a player who has been in a recent French international squad sounds about as sensible as going out and playing with traffic, but Nice's Loic Remy is considered hot property right now.

He's 23, has scored 25 in 66 games for his club, and is, some feel, on the verge of greatness. And, given Liverpool's interest, it'd be nice to think that we won't lose out to them on another of our summer targets following the disappointment of the Joe Cole situation.

So, from that point of view, maybe we should snap him up after all.