With a distinct lack of any notable transfer activity in the Premier League we turn our attention to the Bundesliga to get our fix, where Ruud van Nistelrooy has joined Hamburg in the final move of his career.

Ruud can count Real Madrid and Manchester United amongst his former clubs so what is the record-breaking striker doing heading to a Hamburg side that is struggling to hit form just as a the new galacticos era is starting in Spain?

Writing in the Independent, Sam Wallace claims that despite his unquestionable talents, Ruud has not achieved what he should in the game because he is always in the wrong place at the wrong time.

"As Ruud van Nistelrooy completes the last transfer of his career this week he will surely reflect that, as a striker who has scored so many goals in his career, he has not won as much as his talent deserved.

To complain about winning only three league titles in England and Spain might seem ungrateful but the big players measure out their success by the big prizes and Van Nistelrooy never got close to winning the Champions League. He is the competition's second-highest goalscorer of all time and has never been further than the semi-finals.

Last night at the Bernabeu he was due to be on the pitch before the game against Malaga so the Madrid fans could give their thanks for the 64 goals he has scored in 97 games for their club. He is leaving just as another galacticos era gets going, replaced by the same player, Cristiano Ronaldo, who edged him out of Old Trafford. For the second time, Van Nistelrooy is the man getting his coat just as the party kicks off."

Also writing in the Independent (who seem to be on fire today), James Lawton muses that Arsene Wenger's decision to field a weakened team in the FA Cup, as Arsenal crashed out to Stoke City, could derail the Gunners' entire season.

"Emboldened maybe by his retrieval of the third-round tie at West Ham with an easy flexing of his squad strength, Arsène Wenger sent too many untested kids – three to be precise – into a place which has proved itself capable of chilling the blood of gnarled old pros.

It was a self-inflicted wound at a pivotal point of a season of promise in which the FA Cup offered itself as probably Arsenal's best chance of ending the trophy drought of recent years.

There was another familiar victim. It was the old tournament itself and any sense that it might not necessarily be doomed to the status of a cup of convenience, somewhere you commit yourself wholeheartedly only when all else is lost."