Pardew you slag! £10m for Carroll? £5m? £1m? Paaaaaaaaaaardew!

Sky Sports News, irked at hyperbolic presenter Jim White's failure to land a major signing on Transfer deadline day, having invested so heavily in him, have unceremoniously sacked the Scotsman.

A Sky Sports News Spokesman said: ''It was a bit embarassing really. For the last two years thon Jim has always come up with the goods; last year it was Rafa Van Der Vart and Darren Bent, a few years back he landed Anelka; so we naturally expected Jim would continue in that rich vein of form and bag 'that' signing. Nothing.

Cisse? Too early. Ideally you want Jim's transfer going through at the last possible moment, thereby maximising the hyperbolic drama.

We really went all out this year, indulging in thon Jim's frankly tiresome wild spraffing, putting on an excessively loud and in-your-face spectacle - all this taking place during real and actual football of course. The studio was lit up like a Christmas Tree for fuck's sake.

The ticker ebbed away ever closer to midnight, but we were always confident would pull a signing out of his kilt, even if it meant the urgent use of a fax machine at 23: 57. But the thing just fizzled out in a damp squib. Thon Jim was inconsolable, he had a magnum of champagne at the ready and a bevy of Soccerettes waiting in the wings for Deadline Day celebrations.

We've had to take the unfortunate step of relieving Jim of his duties. We could hardly re-instate him as a simple presenter after having elevated him to Top Dog. Jim had become an institution of Deadline Day and unfortunately a parody of himself.

While I have you, you should know that Leroy Lita has issued a 'come get me plea' for the next window...''