The Warm-Up: West Ham's trolley dash takes them to £20m Moussa Dembele

It has been a gentle introduction to the January transfer window, if Everton signing a 19-year-old from League One for £11m can fit that definition, but things are at least kicking off over at West Ham, where Karren Brady is testing out a new episode arc for the next series of The Apprentice.

Slaven, 48, a sports coach from Croatia with a profitable sideline in TV punditry, has nominated himself PM for this task and must spend anything up to £20m on a new striker by the end of the month. Sounds easy, right? But Slaven is making a bit of a mess of things so far, and Baroness Brady has been casting disappointing glances his way while ominously scribbling notes on a pad of paper.

Firstly, West Ham completely cocked up any remote chance they may have had of bringing Jermain Defoe back to the club by offering a measly £6m for the only person standing in between Sunderland and certain relegation this season.

Then they offered £10m for a person called Scott Hogan, who apparently plays for Brentford, only to be quoted £15m as the Championship club smelled the desperation dripping off poor Slaven as he contemplated a dressing down in the boardroom from Daves Gold and Sullivan.

Next up in the mad trolley dash? A £20m offer for Celtic’s Moussa Dembele, curiously confirmed on West Ham’s own website in a bizarre column by ‘The Insider’, an ITK-type character who reveals the inner workings of the club’s transfer policy - basically Jack Sullivan’s Twitter account, but anonymous.

Did you spot the subtle clue? Yes, Dembele is obviously the only player in Scotland worth £20m. And by the way, Celtic aren’t going to sell him. It’s back to the drawing board for Slaven - find out if he hears the words "you're fired" next week!

Five days into 2017 and Lionel Messi has his first goal of the calendar year, but it didn’t come in the usual context as Barcelona were beaten by Athletic Bilbao in the Copa del Rey last night. It’s a two-legged affair so things might look rather different at Camp Nou in the return fixture but even two red cards shown to Raul Garcia and Ander Iturraspe could not get Barca a result.

Goals from 57-year-old striker Aritz Aduriz and Inaki Williams did the business against a Barca side who might have been questioning the wisdom of allowing many of their star players an extended holiday over Christmas and New Year. Looks like a few of them stayed up too late watching the Hootenanny.

Riyad Mahrez is having a pretty terrible season - not uncommon in the Leicester dressing room, it must be said - but the Algerian winger was quite rightly named African player of the year of the year by the Confederation of African Football last night.

Pierre Emerick-Aubameyang came second and is obviously actually the best African player on the planet, but Mahrez was instrumental to the most ridiculous thing ever to happen in sport so you have to feel he deserves a little more recognition after also landing the PFA Player of the Year award and the BBC African Player of the Year award.

And to make it a Premier League triple, Arsenal’s Alex Iwobi won the young player of the year award, while countryman and Manchester City striker Kelechi Iheanacho was named most promising talent.

Well, it was fun while it lasted. The Chinese government appears to have cottoned on to the fact that spending obscene sums of money on foreign players rather than plunging money into youth development might not actually be hugely beneficial for the country's international prospects (sound familiar?). A spokesman for China’s General Administration of Sport has lamented the “grave phenomenon” or “burning money” and said the government would “set a cap for clubs’ expenditures for buying players, and inhibit unreasonable investment… we are going to regulate, curb the expensive purchases of foreign players, and limit in a reasonable manner the high incomes of the players.”

Congratulations to Carlos Tevez though, sneaking past the government crackdown with his weekly salary in the region of £600,000 per week.

Noted Spanish blogger Juan Mata is trying to diversify his content offering - not a bad idea in a world where automation will give most jobs to robots in the next 10 years or so - and has turned his hand to viral content pushed out on his social media channels.

Basically, Juan Mata is good at bowling. Either that or Juan Mata really did spent a whole day in a bowling alley trying to get his perfect shot.

Ten years ago, Luton Town went 3-1 up at home to Liverpool in the third round of the FA Cup. In one of the most memorable matches the competition has seen, Djibril Cisse also saw a penalty saved as Rafa Benitez’s Reds were left rocking. But they clawed their way back into the game and then Xabi Alonso did this to seal a 5-3 win at Kenilworth Road:

As we all know, the best part of this goal is Steven Gerrard’s angry reaction as Alonso doesn’t pass to him. Wait for the third replay.

What better way to welcome the start of the FA Cup third round than by watching Manchester City brush off West Ham with relative ease? It’s so romantic, the ghost of Barry White has been pressed into presenting duties on BBC One from 7.55pm.