One of the Keanes? Shay Given or Damien Duff? How about none of the above?

For somebody who's played for just two clubs since he swapped Drogheda for Elland Road as a teenager, Ian Harte's career has come attended by an extraordinary amount of high-falutin' and apparently groundless transfer speculation. By the time you read this, he may well have signed for Wolves, Middlesbrough or even Sunderland. Supposedly available for free after three indifferent years with Levante in Spain, the 29-year-old left-back has been linked with all three clubs in the interim and there must be no smoke without fire. After all, once it's mentioned in a newspaper, it has to be true. Well, maybe not in this particular case.

In Harte's career, the ratio of conjecture to actual moves has been so outlandish that he represents a fascinating study about the ludicrous amount of column inches wasted every day on transfer tittle-tattle, too much of which is totally unfounded. At last count, Sunderland had been linked with over 60 different players since the last championship match in the first week of May. Middlesbrough's present tally is in the 70s. Now, both of those outfits and Mick McCarthy's Wolves could well be interested in bringing Harte back from Spain. The problem is it's almost impossible to take any of this idle chatter at face value.

Apart from the fact the local papers that cover each of those clubs religiously don't seem to have even considered Harte as a serious possibility, history has taught us to treat any bulletins regarding this particular left-back's next move with extreme caution. We offer a couple of relevant snippets.

"Juve coach Marcello Lippi is a longtime admirer of the Republic of Ireland full-back and the Serie A leaders have become aware of Leeds' need to sell more players because of their precarious financial position, " gushed the Sunday Mirror in March, 2003. "Harte will feature prominently when Lippi hands his list of summer transfer targets to his Juventus employers."

If that sounds a tad far-fetched, and the product of either creative journalism or a mischievous agent, how about this entertaining nugget?

"Barcelona are preparing a sensational �8m bid for Leeds' Ireland full-back Ian Harte, " went a report in The Express later that year. "Louis Van Gaal has authorised the move because he is desperate for some experience on the left side of his midfield and Harte's sparkling displays for Ireland when they prevented Holland qualifying for the World Cup have won him the chance of a lifetime."

Against that rather impressive background, it becomes a little easier to believe that Gareth Southgate might indeed be interested in luring Harte to the Riverside even if England under-21 international Andrew Taylor played forty games at left-full there last season. Or that Keane has his former Ireland teammate penciled in as Plan B should he fail to prise Leighton Baines away from Wigan Athletic.

Nobody is suggesting any of this is the player's own fault or anything but the difficulty here is that with every putative Harte transfer, nothing is ever quite what it's supposed to be.

After all, the curious thing about the colourful yarns connecting him with some of Europe's most illustrious clubs in the past is that they all appeared at times when he was actually out of the Leeds' first team. Juventus were willing to pay �6m for a leftback who had just been dropped by Terry Venables because he was being booed by his own fans.

Mmmm, the Elland Road faithful were blaming him for their defensive woes, so an Italian giant with a reputation for defensive excellence was all set to splurge millions of pounds to buy him.

Interesting that.

Previously, both Bayern Munich and Inter Milan were said to be preparing serious offers for Harte at the end of a Premiership campaign during which his place at leftback had been usurped by Dominic Matteo. Is anybody seeing a pattern here?

In the summer of 2004, there finally appeared to be some substance to a Harte transfer story. No sooner had papers hit the streets with reports about his pending move to Valencia than he turned up in the flesh in the Spanish city. To sign for Levante FC. This was the equivalent of a Spaniard being mentioned as a target of Arsenal then arriving into London and inking a deal with Crystal Palace. Of course, he hadn't completed a full season in La Liga when the first judiciously-placed stories popped up regarding potential moves back to the Premiership and, with some regularity, to Celtic.

Over the past 12 months alone, almost a dozen British clubs have been described as looking to snap him up. Maybe every report was true. Perhaps none of them were. Surprisingly no interest from Barcelona and Juventus lately however.