By Mark Heys
July 29 2007

Sammy Lee has played down the speculation involving him, Arsene Wenger has distanced himself from reports linking him with a return to Arsenal and Valencia have apparently now tabled a £13 million bid for him but who is telling the truth when it comes to Nicolas Anelka?.

Anelka missed the 1-0 pre-season win over Tranmere Rovers yesterday afternoon with Bolton manager Lee quick to tell the post match press conference that the Trotters star striker was still suffering with a foot injury.

On the same day Anelka's old mentor Wenger once again repeated that he wasn't interested in bringing his fellow countryman to the Emirates Stadium for his second spell with the Gunners.

Now the Sunday Mirror, (yes them again), are revealing that Valencia have put forward a bid of £13 million for Anelka and discussions are at an advanced stage since the middle of last week.

Quite interesting then that the very same newspaper had Anelka going to West Ham at the start of last week and Arsenal just a few days prior to that, with the trip to Korea in the Peace Cup followed by all this jetting around for transfer talks poor old Nico must be suffering from a high degree of jeg lag.

The Frenchman did have a reputation of moving on before the ink was dry on his latest club contract but this time it seems as if everything is being manufacured by the Wanderers bashing media.

Anelka hit twelve goals last season for Bolton, Kevin Davies scraped his usual nine, El-Hadji Diouf managed five and both Stelios Giannakopoulos and Ricardo Vaz-Te hit the grand total of zero between them.

Even new signing Heidar Helguson could only muster four goals for Fulham and one of those came in the League Cup, so Anelka's goals are more than important to the team and with just a fortnight to go until the big kick off getting a replacement in would be like scouring the bargain bucket for a CD that was fashionable a decade ago but now sounds crap.

It took he who shall not be named a few years to bring in a top quality striker like Anelka so to see it all dismantle after just one season would be very disappointing indeed.

As for the truth, well Lee says he's had no offers, Wenger turned a blind eye without seeing it and the Mirror will have him off to club number 246 tommorow.

You decide?