Picking up the pieces?

The official list of players released by Premier League clubs has now been published and there are no surprises for us: stalwart Steve Harper's gone (but not forgotten), Danny Simpson is at liberty to live up his playboy lifestyle as Tulisa's other half and Yven Moyo has been let go without breaking into the first-team squad.

Details of other clubs' rejects make for interesting reading, though. There are a handful of very high-cost write-offs - Andrey Arshavin, David Bentley, Roque Santa Cruz - that would have had us wincing if we were the club for whom they'd singularly underperformed. I'm not sure there are too many on there that we should bust a gut to try and snap up. Mladen Petric, perhaps, who didn't get many chances in his one and only season at Fulham - but he, like most on the list, is someone whose best days are well behind him. Or jug-eared ex-Mackem Rory Delap, whose prodigious throw-ins would at least make us more threatening from set-pieces...