After a mountain of press and web speculation it now appears that City manager Peter Taylor is playing down rumours of a possible £1 Million strike for Gillingham defender Chris Hope.

According to the Gills official website, who were so shocked to hear the news they rang up Taylor to ask him what the hell was going on he said, "It's news to me, I haven't made any enquiry or spoken to anyone about that, it's just people guessing."

This was also the reply that Hope gave adding, "As far as I'm concerned it's just paper talk."