Ousmane Dembele
Current club: Borussia Dortmund • Could join: Barcelona
How Not To Get A Transfer & Alienate People, by Ousmane Dembele (aged 20-and-a-quarter). Thursday was a bad day indeed for the Dortmund youngster, who thought it would be a great idea to miss training and fly to Paris to visit family and friends in a not-so-subtle bid to force through a move to Barcelona. Dortmund duly suspended him.
The Catalans have had a €100m bid turned down by BVB, with reports suggesting they want €150m for the player they signed from Rennes for just €15m last summer. Outlets in France and Germany, however, are suggesting it’s only a matter of time before he’s a Barça player.
Kylian Mbappe
Current club: Monaco • Could join: PSG, Real Madrid
Another potential move involving one of France’s finest youngsters is PSG’s attempts to spend all the money in the world ever and secure the signature of world football’s most coveted teenager.
Mbappe has been the subject of constant speculation all summer; most of it has suggested that he’ll join Real Madrid eventually, but PSG have always been in the chase - and reports broke on Thursday that the French giants had agreed a fee of €150m plus €30m in add-ons for the 18-year-old. They’ve been refuted since, but there’s definite interest from the Parisians.
Ricardo Pereira
Current club: Porto • Could join: Tottenham
No, you’re not seeing things - this is Tottenham being linked with an actual football player. Portuguese outlet A Bola say Spurs had officials at Porto’s game against Estoril, and that Pereira was surely the reason for their trip.
The 23-year-old right-back seems like a sensible target given Kyle Walker’s departure to Manchester City, and can be nabbed via a €25m release clause should Spurs wish to trigger it. He’s spent the last two seasons on loan at Ligue 1 Nice.
William Carvalho
Current club: Sporting • Could join: West Ham
Pick a Premier League club… any Premier League club. They’ve probably been linked with Carvalho at some point. This week it’s West Ham flexing their muscles, but this time it appears to be serious - The Telegraph are reporting a £27.1m bid for the Portugal international.
The story says talks have been ongoing all week, that Sporting want closer to £36m, but also that Carvalho is keen to join the Hammers. This one’s looking good for Hammers fans.
Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain
Current club: Arsenal • Could join: Chelsea
Oxlade-Chamberlain hasn’t really been seriously linked away from Arsenal until now. But this week the Mirror claim that Chelsea are ready to ramp up interest in the England international and test the Gunners’ resolve with a £35m offer.
The 23-year-old only has a year left on his contract and, although Arsene Wenger has consistently talked up his player, Oxlade-Chamberlain is yet to agree a new deal at the Emirates Stadium. “Between me and the Ox, I’ve told him what I believe he should do,” Arsenal legend Ian Wright told FourFourTwo cryptically this week. “Now it’s down to him.” Ooo.
Ross Barkley
Current club: Everton • Could join: Tottenham, Chelsea
Barkley has one year left on his Toffees contract and told Ronald Koeman that he wanted a fresh challenge at the end of last season. But so far there have been few takers - or none more accurately, which has led his manager to suggest that he might still be an Everton player into next month.
"If there's no interest he will be part of the team," said Koeman. "He is training with Everton, he is part of the team and training in a good way." It seems inevitable there will be bids before the end of the summer, however, since the current situation dictates that Barkley is significantly less valuable than this time last year.
Virgil van Dijk
Current club: Southampton • Could join: Liverpool, Chelsea
An “insulted” Van Dijk handed in an official transfer request at St Mary’s this week. “I feel I have no alternative after I was given notice of the club’s intention to impose a disciplinary sanction against me of a fine equivalent to two weeks’ wages,” read the Dutchman’s spiel, “... I am incredibly ambitious and want to achieve as much as I possibly can to fulfil my potential in what is a very short career as a professional footballer. I want to play European football again and challenge for major honours.”
Liverpool want him, but are so worried about pushing Southampton’s buttons again that no bid has been forthcoming (remember, the Reds had to apologise for tapping him up in July). Those rumours about Chelsea won’t go away either.
Philippe Coutinho
Current club: Liverpool • Could join: Barcelona
“Liverpool is not a club that has to sell players," Jurgen Klopp told Sky Germany yesterday. "That is set in stone, so what they pay in the end doesn't matter. From a financial standpoint, there is no price limit to let him go. No price at which we are ready to give in.”
Coutinho has asked Klopp to leave (but won’t go on strike, according to FFT’s man on the inside), but it seems his polite appeals will fall on deaf ears. Liverpool have reportedly rejected a second bid from Barcelona this week, of €100m. Sounds like Klopp could be right.
Luan
Current club: Gremio • Could join: Liverpool
Globo Esporte had claimed - wrongly, it turns out - that a Reds scout went to watch the Brazilian forward in Wednesday night’s Copa Libertadores match between Gremio and Godoy Cruz. They’ve been loosely linked with signing Luan for most of the summer, but it seems they might not follow up on any interest.
Spartak Moscow have reportedly tried with a €20 million bid for Luan, but that’s on hold - basically while Gremio try to get a better offer. “The deal is on standby,” said club president Romildo Bolzan Junior. “If Liverpool have a bid, it better be made soon.”
Ravel Morrison
Current club: Lazio (apparently) • Could join: Birmingham
Harry Redknapp has seen one loan move for Morrison rebuffed by Lazio, for whom the 24-year-old has played eight times since summer 2015, and hasn’t featured for since April 2016. He’s even been training with Birmingham for a month, and featured in two pre-season friendlies. So what stopped the Serie A side from saying yes?
“We made an offer; it was only a very small offer to Lazio, because I feel Ravel isn’t quite where he was at, at the moment," said Redknapp, pleasing nobody. That’s probably why, then. “If Lazio want to take the offer they can, if not he'll have to go back there."
Oh.
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