That was the week that was
Last updated : 03 July 2005 By Charlie Roper
Typical. You wait all summer for a bit of transfer movement and then you get four in one week! Of course, anything involving a player joining the club is just rumour while if there's a story about a player leaving doing the rounds, you can lay money on it coming true.
At the beginning of the week, things didn't seem that bad. Dennis Wise may have joined Southampton, but few tears were shed. Even fewer tears were spotted around Zampa Road when it emerged that "coach" Dave Bassett would be joining him and Sir Clive Woodward at St. Mary's Stadium.
And then it went completely wrong when Peter Sweeney decided to join Stoke City rather than stay at Millwall. To be
honest, it wasn't much of a shock. Rumours of his departure had been commonplace for a while but when The Lions decided to improve their somewhat derisory offer it did look like he might stay. However, you can't blame the Scot for feeling unwanted. Having played over 50 League games for Millwall and appeared in both the FA Cup Final and UEFA ties against Ferencvaros, it could be argued that he'd done more to earn a new deal than Ben May, Terry Masterson and Tony Craig put together. Jeff Burnige may yet rue his decision to leave it late in the date to offer the youngster a new deal...
Speaking of Ben May, he should count his chickens that he got a new contract. Mark Quigley never and is now available on a free.
On the plus side, Steve Claridge finally appointed a second-in-command in the form of Neil McNab. And there appears to be some truth in the story that the new boss is after out-of-favour Forest striker Neil Harris... er, sorry, Marlon King. Not a season goes by when we're linked with the former jailbird so this year shouldn't be any different.
Finally, it looks like Tony Warner may rejoin the club. Whether on loan or a free - his situation at Cardiff has yet to be fully resolved - is not clear but the reasoning behind the move is that he used to be a bit a useful and - more importantly in Jeff's eyes - he's cheaper than Marshall. So that's alright then.
