Tottenham or Man City In For £12m Upson.

The question is simple, should we take it if it is offered? The clubs rumoured to be interested are Unreal City and Tottenham, though 'Arry insists he isn't in the market for anybody this January, apart from a good brief to defend him in court of course. With a change of manager, will City still be as keen on Upson, or might Mancini have different ideas? City supporters who have left comments on here have consistently maintained that they do not need another centre back but the evidence contradicts that: they can score until the cash cows come home, but they are as strong at the back as Stuart Lubbock.

The argument in favour of selling Upson is that he is not getting any younger and only has one year left on his contract. His value will drop by the week from February onwards so this is the ideal time to cash in on him from an accountant's point of view - and of course, accountants are now running the club!

The argument against is obvious: the sale of Collins sent shock waves through our defence from which we are only now just recovering. Gabbidon is injury prone. Tomkins is inconsistent. Da Costa is out of favour. Upson is unfussy but effective. He holds our defence together and before we sell him, we had better be bloody sure that we have somebody good lined up to replace him. If not, we will struggle to survive in the Prem. There's not much point in banking £12m if you wave goodbye to the Premiership television money in the process. If we had to sell somebody to generate funds for rebuilding, I would favour Green, Behrami or Parker over Upson personally. Our weakest areas are at the back and up front, so it seems madness to me to consider weakening the defence still further by parting with Upson.

Had we retained Collins, I would have favoured selling Upson now. But Collins was sold. There are not a lot of quality centre backs available at the moment, and when sold, they command very high prices - as evidenced by Lescott and Turner. Man Utd may need a centre half or two themselves and Arsenal should not be ruled out either. Maybe we have identified somebody through Nani but backing his judgement appears a very hit and miss business doesn't it?

Personally, I would be delighted with a boring transfer window, perhaps with us picking up Kezman on loan and signing Sol Campbell, and selling nobody. Unless, of course we are sold next week, with money injected into the club. Well, we can dream can't we?