🎶 We're Signing Engles Instead

 Word filtering down from the concourse is that we’ve apparently signed Arne Engels from Celtic, which is tremendously exciting, although I should probably confess that I haven’t watched a match north of the border since roughly 2012 and therefore have absolutely no idea who he is.

What I do know is that he’s a 22-year-old Belgian international midfielder and that we’re apparently handing over a cool £22m for his services. That makes him a record signing for a Championship club, which feels delightfully, magnificently absurd. The Celtic faithful also seem genuinely aggrieved to lose him, which is usually a fairly reliable indication that the lad can actually kick a football in the intended direction.

Naturally, the collective whisper around the Stratford turnstiles is that we’ve pulled off an absolute masterstroke. Whether Engels turns out to be a midfield maestro or merely another colourful character in our ongoing footballing soap opera remains to be seen. Let’s hope the optimistic chatter is right, if only to give us something pleasant to discuss over a tepid half-time pie.