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Transfer Betting: Have Spurs seen the back of Berbatov?

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And for that matter, is Ronaldo Bernabeu-bound? Keane going to Anfield? Lampard headed to the San Siro? Transfer betting comes to Betfair...

As every football fan knows, the close season sends the transfer rumour mill into overdrive - and the summer of 2008 has been a vintage year so far, if that's your kind of thing.

At clubs up and down the country the chatter of big money arrivals and departures has dominated the fan talk and the back pages of papers local and national. From Fergie's outrage at Real Madrid's brazen courtship of Manchester United's Cristiano Ronaldo to Dimitar Berbatov's seemingly inevitable adieu to Spurs, transfer chat has dominated once again.

The interesting thing for football punters is, if you've got an opinion on these and other high profile transfers, you can bet on four of the biggest potential moves of the summer on Betfair. Markets have now opened on whether Ronaldo, Berbatov, Keane and Lampard will stay put or go.

The current betting suggests that Chelsea and Man Utd will hang on to their goalscoring midfielders with last year's Premier League top scorer a [1.3] shot to remain at Old Trafford, and Lampard even shorter at [1.18].

The news for Spurs is a lot worse. The prized duo of Robbie Keane and Dimitar Berbatov are odds-against to stay, but we've all seen shorter odds turned over of course.

And it's not as if every fan wants one of these big names to pull on the shirt in 2008/09. Below, betting.betfair's Maxwell Liu - a lifelong United fan - tells us why he doesn't want Berbatov at Old Trafford next season...

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Dimitar Berbatov is a Manchester United player.

It took me a while to realise because, despite his excellent scoring record at Bayer Leverkeusen, when he arrived in England he seemed an archetypal Tottenham signing. The perennial Premier League 'men who weren't there' had found another striker to fade at anaemic White Hart Lane amongst a 40-man squad where too many players are never enough.

I like Spurs. I've got mates who are Spurs. They are the least offensive London club because they are the least 'London' London club. But, although they are a big club, they are not a big team and Berbatov turned out to be a very un-Spurs-like quantity. His combination of deftness and explosiveness, grace and grandeur, marked him as a football aristocrat of Cantona pedigree. It was only a matter of waiting until the end of his first season before we snapped him up.

But we didn't and the moment has now passed. Consider kit. Forget the bland conventional wisdom of Liverpool red, the Tory resplendency of Chelsea blue - red, white and black are the most seductive, intoxicating sporting colours. Alan Shearer turned down Old Trafford because he was a small town boy who lacked ambition but he also stayed away because, if you picture him in United's strip, it doesn't work.

Berbatov would have suited United's kit a year ago but while the colours remain, the cut of the shirt has changed and our affections have cooled. He is an orchestrator, a bifta-chuffing enigma to sign suddenly and build a dynasty around when all we need is a light, mobile operator to roll the goals in from five yards and quietly galvanize our front-line the way Michael Carrick did the midfield two years ago. My own preference was for Dave Kitson. Or Samuel Eto'o. Or a fit Louis Sa-bloody-ha.

We said we'd wait for Berbatov but, like the girl whose man goes off to war, we lied. A year is a long time. Last July, Labour enjoyed a comfortable poll lead, Jose Mourinho was Chelsea manager and Heath Ledger was making films. Life changes fast. So do football strips and, like Alan Shearer, I can't see Berbatov in United's. Unlike Shearer, he'll always be a United player.