Silly season is poorly named.

‘Silly‘ doesn’t even begin to cover it.

Not too long ago, Arsenal were said to be interested in signing Tom Cleverley. Then Aston Villa made the FA Cup final and Tim Sherwood starting making jokes about not playing Cleverley at Wembley unless he signed for the club permanently. It seemed as if sense had, finally, prevailed.

But lo! Back come the rumours again, stared, as far as we can tell, by London24 and then repeated by a number of the major sites.

So why, exactly, would Arsene Wenger be interested in Cleverley whom, I think we can all agree, has yet to fulfil his potential since bursting onto the scene a few years ago with United?

At present, Wenger can’t even squeeze the midfielders he currently has (all of whom are better than Cleverley) into his first XI so it’s unlikely that he would add another unless he was exceptional and, even then, as we saw last summer with him turning down Cesc Fabregas, that doesn’t even guarantee that he’d be open to it.

No doubt there’s some reason that Arsenal are being linked. Contrary to popular belief, the major players don’t tend to just fabricate transfer rumours.

Quite what that reason is, though, I couldn’t begin to imagine.