Gabriele Marcotti

THE fact that we became so enamoured with t he Peter Odemwingie tale on t r a nsfer deadline day i s probably not coincidental. Frankly, not much else happened, at least not involving the top clubs. Left-back Nacho Monreal to Arsenal for £8 million, striker Danny Graham to Sunderland for £5m, a few other bits and bobs. The two biggest deals, Mario Balotelli swapping Manchester City for Milan and Chris Samba making his pricey return to the Barclays Premier League, were finalised on “Deadline Day” but announced several days before.

It was a lot like last season in fact, when the biggest reasons for Jim White to get excited were Nikica Jelavic and Pavel Pogrebnyak.

And a hell of a far cry from 2010/ 11, when Luis Suarez, Andy Carroll, David Luiz and Fernando Torres did their musical chair thing for more than £100m combined.

Without much else going on – apart from the pathological Stoke fan who stood next to the Sky Sports News reporter and kept lifting his shirt to expose and massage his nipple – Odemwingie took centre stage.

Led to believe that West Bromwich Albion were on the verge of negotiating his transfer to QPR, Odemwingie and his agent hopped in his car and drove the 80 or so miles down to Loftus Road.

When they arrived though, they found that the deal was far from complete. And, in fact, QPR would not allow them into their offices.

It’s the sort of thing that happens all the time in football but, of course, the TV cameras were there, prompting much hilarity.

West Brom said he wasn’t authorised to be there ( as if they can “authorise” what Odemwingie does when he’s off duty), QPR boss Harry Redknapp called it “a mixup” and the media picked on the Nigerian international as some sort of paradigm of the greedy footballer, forcing moves to other clubs. Which, as Odemwingie himself pointed out, was rather funny, since what happened wasn’t too dissimilar to the way his transfer to West Brom from Lokomotiv Moscow