BBC
Inter Milan have joined the race to sign Arsenal and Gabon striker Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, 30. (Mirror)
Chelsea are planning a £20m move for CSKA Moscow striker Fyodor Chalov, 21. (Express)
Inter want to offer Chelsea £25m for Italy left-back Emerson Palmieri, 25. (Independent)
Chelsea and Manchester City will go head-to-head for the signature of Leicester and England defender Ben Chilwell, 23. (The i)
Tottenham boss Jose Mourinho is preparing a £30m transfer bid for Leicester and Portugal full-back Ricardo Pereira, 26. (Express)
England Under-21 forward Dominic Calvert-Lewin, 22, will sign a new five-year deal at Everton despite interest from Manchester United. (Telegraph)
Juventus plan to extend Portugal forward Cristiano Ronaldo's contract until 2023 - when he will be 38. (Corriere dello Sport, via Mail)
Chelsea are weighing up a move for Lyon's French forward Moussa Dembele, 23. (Sky Sports)
Hertha Berlin have agreed a loan deal for Arsenal and Switzerland midfielder Granit Xhaka, 27, with a view to a permanent move in the summer. (Independent)
Manchester United and Serbia midfielder Nemanja Matic, 31, says he "doesn't really know" if he will extend his contract at Old Trafford. (Telegraf - in Serbian)
Aston Villa manager Dean Smith is lining up a loan deal for Burnley midfielder Danny Drinkwater, 29, to replace injured Scotland midfielder John McGinn, 25. (Star)
Paul Pogba's agent Mino Raiola says Manchester United is so poorly run that the club would "ruin" some of football's greatest ever players, including Pele and Diego Maradona. (La Repubblica, via Times - subscription required)
Crystal Palace manager Roy Hodgson insists Ivory Coast forward Wilfried Zaha is not for sale but admits the club would have to consider a "serious bid" for the 27-year-old. (Guardian)
Wolves winger Adama Traore says he would have no issue in signing for Real Madrid despite his links to Barcelona. The Spanish 23-year-old came through the youth set-up at the Catalan club. (Jugones, via Goal)
Newcastle manager Steve Bruce wants to sign three players in the January transfer window. (Telegraph)
Sheffield United are considering a move for Bordeaux and Switzerland's 27-year-old defender Loris Benito. (Football Insider)
West Brom look set to make 23-year-old Brazilian winger Matheus Pereira's loan from Sporting Lisbon permanent. (Sky Sports)
Manchester City may cancel 22-year-old winger Patrick Roberts' loan deal at Norwich and send him to Middlesbrough instead because of a lack of appearances. (Mail)
Guardian Rumour Mill
John Brewin
If a transfer window can slam shut then it can also spring open. There’s no such thing as New Year’s Day signalling a dry January in the heady world of football transfers. This is where the party starts for 31 days of signing-on fees, yellow tickers and term sheets with agents and ITKs hammering the WhatsApp like thunder.
Now that the revoking of Chelsea’s transfer ban means he is able to open Roman Abramovich’s cheque book, Frank Lampard fancies rolling back the years to the club’s glory days and spending like Viv Nicholson. Frank sees Moussa Dembélé – once of Fulham and Celtic, now of Lyon – as a potential new Didier Drogba, which may be bad news for Tammy Abraham. Another option as a forward is the CSKA Moscow striker Fyodor Chalov who would cost around £20m.
Meanwhile, Olivier Giroud’s desire for first-team football before Euro 2020 and Wilfried Zaha’s permanent state of being the subject of transfer speculation has led to talk of some kind of swap deal, with the Frenchman heading to Crystal Palace and Zaha joining Frank’s entertainers on London’s fashionable Kings Road. Also for the Chelsea off may be Emerson Palmieri, who is wanted by Antonio Conte at Internazionale. And on the opposite side of the defence, Chelsea are willing to pay £30m to sign Ricardo Pereira from Leicester, with Tottenham also interested.
Emerson’s availability may be a prelude to Chelsea showing serious interest in Ben Chilwell, though Manchester City’s long-term courting of the Leicester left-back remains undiminished in its ardour.
This January could see the opening skirmishes of a running battle between José Mourinho and Daniel Levy over transfer policy, and the Tottenham manager wants three players to come in. Firstly, a centre-half: that may be one of Bournemouth’s Nathan Aké or West Ham’s Issa Diop. Next, Serge Aurier’s ears may be burning with the suggestion that a right-back is being targeted: Napoli’s Elseid Hysaj and Marseille’s Hiroki Sakai are two names in the offing beyond Pereira. And, with Christian Eriksen entering the limbo of being able to sign a contract with a new club from 1 January, an attacking midfielder is desired. Gremio’s Everton Soares fits that bill.
Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, who seems set to be a mainstay of these pages for a while to come, has been linked with Barcelona while Inter and Conte also want him. Meanwhile, Granit Xhaka’s loan move to Hertha Berlin from Arsenal – with a view to a permanent move – is set to be done imminently, even if Mikel Arteta retains an admiration for the Swiss firebrand.
This may not be one for this month, but links continue to grow between Manchester United and Jude Bellingham, Birmingham City’s best 16-year-old since Trevor Francis was bashing them in at St Andrew’s back in 1970. “The club hasn’t mentioned anything to me about Jude Bellingham,” said the Blues manager, Pep Clotet, before his team’s match with Wigan but it seems more than likely that a Premier League fanbase will be belting out Hey Jude in Bellingham’s honour by the start of the 2020-21 season. The best news for United is that young Jude is not yet a Mino Raiola client or related to a former Manchester City player. Or at least as far as anyone knows.
Elsewhere in the Championship, Cameron Carter-Vickers is set to return to parent club Tottenham from his loan at Stoke, where he has not been getting on the field in the past month, and be sent straight out on another loan, to Derby.
Guardian
David Moyes urges West Ham players to give home fans reason for cheer
• New Hammers manager wants London Stadium to be fortress
• ‘There are not many clubs that get 60,000 people every week’
Luke McLaughlin
David Moyes has urged his West Ham players to turn London Stadium into a fortress following his reappointment as manager this week.
The Hammers have played home matches at London Stadium since 2016 and, while Moyes acknowledged lingering dissatisfaction with the new stadium among fans, he insists West Ham’s players can extinguish any negative feeling with regular successes at home.
“The first thing I would say is that we did turn it into a bit of a fortress before,” Moyes said, referring to his first spell as manager. “But I think that was the players who did it. The players impacted on the supporters, impacted on people who go to the games by how they performed.
“There are not many clubs in world football that get 60,000 people every week … We need to give them something that makes them cheer.”
The Scot recalled how difficult he found it at Upton Park as a visiting manager, which was the club’s home for more than 100 years. But his aim now is to make their current home similarly intimidating for visiting teams.
“It [London Stadium] will be there for 100 years,” he said. “We need to get used to it. We need also to find a way to win regular, how we can make it difficult for the opponents.
“There is nobody who would go back and say the days at Upton Park were not great days. I came as an opposition manager and it was really difficult.”
Moyes also said the claret-coloured pitch surround, which was installed in April 2019, was a step in the right direction. “We did talk about the different colour surround but so did Slaven [Bilic] before me. I asked the question [during his first spell in charge], and they do believe it has helped.
“We have a really good new stadium and we have to give the supporters something to shout about. If we do that, then hopefully that will takes their minds off anything else.”
