With David Moyes keeping quiet on his transfer targets (he's been burnt a lot) and keeping the press at arms length, the papers are left with no option but long range speculation.

The latest rumour to come out of the Daily Mail earlier this week was that Mikel Arteta will be swanning off to Atletico Madrid, and Everton will bring in David Bentley from Blackburn instead.

This rumour, a horrific Frankenstein meshing of a months-old Arteta whisper with the fact that Bentley has been trumpeting his desire to move, turned out to be false – and Bentley instead looks to be possibly heading to White Hart Lane. If there was one shred of truth in it, though, then Moyes should be thinking of having both.

When schlubby “Friend” Joey Tribbiani was asked by flatmate Chandler Bing to choose between "The girl from the Xerox place – buck naked" on the one hand, or on the other hand "a big tub of jam", Joey's answer was, "Put your hands together..."

This should be Moyes' credo. Long gone are the one-in-one-out days at Everton and Moyes is surely acutely aware that this is the summer when we need to buy the most wisely – in the transfer market Moyes needs to have eyes bigger than his belly. 

Peering over the wall of press speculation is becoming ever harder, and once you are past that you have a minefield of ulterior motives from players wanting new contracts, agents who – growing tired of their players' stagnant careers – engineer moves, all of which is picked up by the keen antennae of the media who are desperate for some transfer tales.

Add to the this the fact that Everton have had a pretty embarrassing history with transfers, from aged Brazilian Muller, to the Fabrizio Ravanelli saga, and Moyes' own poor experiences. He was gazumped by Rafa B in our chase for Sissoko, while Emre and Scott Parker chose money and the middle road of mediocrity at Newcastle over a move to the upwardly mobile Toffees.