BBC
Barcelona want to keep England forward Marcus Rashford, 28, beyond the term of his loan from Manchester United. (Athletic - subscription required) , external
Aston Villa are looking to recruit 28-year-old English striker Tammy Abraham, who is on loan at Besiktas from Roma this season. (Telegraph - subscription required) , external
Manchester United are hoping to beat Arsenal to signing Blackburn Rovers and England youth international Igor Tyjon, 17. (Sun) , external
Newcastle United are assessing Atalanta and Italy centre-back Giorgio Scalvini, 22, following the injury to Swiss defender Fabian Schar, 34. (Teamtalk) , external
Chelsea have 'overtaken' their rivals in the race to sign 25-year-old Real Madrid and Brazil forward Vinicius Jr. (Fichajes - in Spanish) , external
Crystal Palace boss Oliver Glasner is the frontrunner with Manchester United's hierarchy to become the club's next permanent manager. (Caughtoffside) , external
Meanwhile, United are hoping to have clarity on who will lead the team for the rest of the season early next week. (ESPN)
Sky Paper Talk
Premier League
Aston Villa are eyeing a move for Tammy Abraham as they look to strengthen Unai Emery's squad for the second half of the campaign and keep pace at the top of the Premier League - Sunday Telegraph
Tottenham may allow forward Mathys Tel to go out on loan this month as he pushes to make France's World Cup squad - Mail on Sunday
Arsenal have turned to the world's leading throw-in coach, Thomas Gronnemark, in a further effort to weaponise set pieces and use marginal gains in their push to win the Premier League - Sunday Times
Jason Wilcox has likened his role to the manager behind the scenes at Manchester United - The Sun on Sunday
FA Cup
Macclesfield FC owner Rob Smethurst has promised to take his side to Ibiza to celebrate their historic FA Cup win over Crystal Palace - Mail on Sunday
Scotland
It's being claimed that Celtic's deal for Niko Sigur "is unlikely to happen" - Scottish Sun on Sunday
Unimpressed Glenn Hoddle has warned Tottenham's decision makers they've got it wrong over the decision to allow Mikey Moore to flourish at Rangers - Daily Record
David Gray is quite happy for his Hibs side to continue flying under the radar - but he admits it's going to be hard to keep Kieron Bowie off other club's January wishlists - Daily Record
Cricket
England are considering a player curfew, among other measures, when the team leave for a seven-week tour of the subcontinent next Sunday - The Times
GFF
West Ham make approach for Metz’s Alpha Touré
In a bid to save themselves from relegation to the EFL Championship, West Ham United have already been active in the January transfer window. Taty Castellanos and Pablo have both arrived for significant fees in the opening days of the window, with the Hammers in the relegation zone at the halfway point of the season.
The Premier League side are also looking to bring in a bright prospect from Ligue 1, L’Équipe understands. The publication reports that they have made an approach for FC Metz midfielder Alpha Touré (19). The Senegal youth international, one of many players to have made the jump from Génération Foot to Les Grenats, has featured in all of the club’s Ligue 1 games this season, although he has made just seven league starts. An opening offer of €7m for Touré has been rejected.
Touré’s contract runs until 2028. Metz are also set to lose Brian Madjo to Aston Villa, whilst Gauthier Hein may also depart before the closure of the transfer window, amid interest from the MLS.
Football Insider
Exclusive: West Ham star Guido Rodriguez opens talks to join Gremio
Brazilian side Gremio are in talks to sign West Ham midfielder Guido Rodriguez, sources have told Football Insider.
Argentine midfielder Rodriguez finds himself well down the pecking order at West Ham, making just five appearances in the Premier League this term.
Juventus have been linked with Rodriguez, but now Gremio are hoping to bring the Argentine back to South America.
Rodriguez is in the final six months of his contract and West Ham are keen to offload him in this month’s transfer window.
The 31-year-old is ready to move on in the second half of the season as he is still hoping to earn a spot in Lionel Scaloni’s Argentina World Cup squad.
Rodriguez’s move to West Ham from Real Betis in the summer of 2024 has not been a success, and he was heavily linked with a departure from the London Stadium over the summer.
The midfielder was linked with a return move to Betis for much of the pre-season period, but ultimately remained in East London beyond the deadline with West Ham unable to secure a replacement for him.
Rodriguez has started just two Premier League games so far this season, as he has remained firmly out of favour despite Nuno Espirito Santo arriving in place of Graham Potter in the dugout.
The negotiations with Gremio look set to provide the Hammers with the perfect chance to move him on this winter, and potentially even secure a small profit on their initial free transfer.
A January departure would also allow the capital club to clear Rodriguez’s wages from their desks ahead of the final few weeks of the window, which could potentially allow them to invest that money elsewhere in the squad.
I fell in love with West Ham when I was six but we aren't a family club anymore: Hammers legend TONY COTTEE delivers his damning verdict on the board's 'terrible' recruitment... and the big decision they botched after Euro glory
By JAMES SHARPE
Cottee with our man James at the Roslin Beach Hotel near his home in Southend
Tony Cottee has a quiz question. We have barely pulled up our chairs overlooking the Southend seafront when he asks us to name all the players signed by the current West Ham owners that were sold on for a substantial profit.
No, Declan Rice doesn’t count because he came through the academy. Players signed for a fee and sold for one at least, say, £5m bigger. Clue: there’s only three of them.
One’s easy. Mohammed Kudus, £55million to rivals Tottenham in the summer. The next is a bit trickier until Cottee’s hint gives it away: ‘The best player in the final season at Upton Park. Scored one of the best free-kicks ever.’
Oh, Dimitri Payet. Duh. The third, he says, we’ll never get in a million years so puts us out of our misery. Flynn Downes, signed from Swansea for £12m in 2022 and sold to Southampton for £18m two years later.
‘Only three players in 16 years,’ says Cottee. ‘That shows you how good the recruitment has been, doesn’t it.’
Some may quibble over Ashley Fletcher’s absence, a free agent from Manchester United but to whom West Ham eventually paid compensation. Cottee can let the quizzers fight that out among themselves. This is a club, after all, that has spent more than £350m on nearly 60 forwards since 2010 including two more in Pablo and Taty Castellanos for nearly £50m in the last week alone.
Cottee, now 60, is just as fed up as every other West Ham fan. He’s a season ticket holder, one he pays for himself, and was at the London Stadium on Tuesday night to watch West Ham slump yet further towards relegation with defeat by Nottingham Forest. ‘We are in massive, massive trouble.’
That’s how he sees himself, as a fan. Not as the legend who scored 146 goals for the club, netted on his debut as a 17-year-old against Tottenham more than four decades ago, and was part of the ‘Boys of 86’, who this year celebrate 40 years since the finished third in Division One, but as the boy who went to Upton Park for the first time in 1972 and found his first love.
Over the course of two hours in the ballroom of the Roslin Beach Hotel, not far from his home in Southend, he gets it all off his chest. How they were right to leave Upton Park but should have moved to a purpose-built stadium like Everton. How he’d have gone for Slaven Bilic over Nuno Espirito Santo. How they should, really, have backed David Moyes.
‘I fell in love with West Ham as a six-year-old, and that will never change, but the club is completely different now to what it was what I first started supporting or playing,’ he says.
‘West Ham is, was, always a family club. It didn’t matter if you were in the South Bank, the Chicken Run, or the posh seats. Everyone knew everyone’s name.’
It was a quick, but telling, self-correction. ‘Well, it’s not a family club anymore because of decisions that have been made over the last 16 years.’
And, so, to the heart of it. The main reason many West Ham fans feel they are in this mess and against whom they continue to protest: the owners, namely David Sullivan and vice-chair Karen Brady.
‘There's never a plan,’ he says. ‘Any business, you have a five-year plan, a 10-year plan. West Ham have a five-day plan. They don't think ahead. We won the Youth Cup, we won the Conference League. It was a sliding doors moment in the club's history. Let's kick on. Let's get in the Champions League.
Cottee believes West Ham should have stuck with David Moyes after he led the club to glory in the Conference League, their first trophy since they lifted the FA Cup in 1980
'And what do we do? Let's go for the Championship instead. We haven’t replaced David Moyes and the recruitment has been terrible. Who's responsible for that? It's the board.’
As always with West Ham, the despair is best delivered via gallows humour. West Ham now serve a beer at the London Stadium called Lost Lager. ‘Only at West Ham could you go in after another defeat and say: “another pint of Lost, please!”.’
The message, though, is clear and passionate. ‘David Sullivan is a rich man. He doesn't have to sell, and no one's making him. But what I would emphasize to him is that he's a custodian of the club, not the owner. The fans own that football club, not the chairman, not the board. And as a custodian, you should do what's right for the football club and that means if someone comes along that he thinks is the right person to take the club forward, he should step aside.’
Cottee, it turns out, is a meticulous man. Since the age of seven, started by his dad, he’s kept scrapbooks of every season, including every game, every goal, even drawing little diagrams of how he’d scored them.
It’s how, when he was bored during Covid, he could work out how many headers he’d scored. It was 44. Not bad for a lad told he was too small to make it and certainly too small to become one of the finest goal scorers England has ever produced. Time for another Cottee quiz. ‘Since I retired, how many players have ended up with more top-flight goals than me?’
Cottee sits 17th on the all-time list on 214, scored for West Ham, Everton and Leicester, out of a career total of 306.
Cottee scored 115 of his 214 top-flight goals for West Ham, across two spells at the club
Wayne Rooney, surely? ‘No, he’s on 208,’ says Cottee in a flash. ‘The only one is Alan Shearer.’ Not even Harry Kane? Not yet, at least.
‘I was so pleased when Harry went to Munich because he’s on 213,’ grins Cottee. ‘I just want Harry to retire there. A bit worried about Erling Haaland, though.
‘Can you imagine how annoyed I get when they talk about the Premier League 100 Club? They say “oh Haaland’s joined the 100 Club” and they put the list up and I’m nowhere to be seen because I only scored 78 Premier League goals. There was life before the Premier League, you know. What about the other 136? Do they not count anymore?’
Cottee admits he recently saw an unofficial list online of the all-time leading League Cup goal scorers and, when he noticed he wasn’t on it, emailed the Football League to remind them that he should be whenever they get around to doing an official one.
For all that frustration and pedantry though, Cottee is not a man who craves the limelight. It’s why he struggled at being the British record transfer after his move to Everton despite a hat-trick on debut. ‘I was always just “The £2m man”, I was never just Tony Cottee. It weighed on my shoulders.’
It’s why when he suffered a brain haemorrhage seven years ago, which he originally thought was sunstroke after a golf day, his first instinct was to keep it to himself. ‘I would describe myself as a bit old-fashioned, British stiff upper lip and all that,’ says Cottee. ‘The ultimate insult during my playing days was to have the physio come on. You couldn’t show any sign of weakness.
‘It was scary being in hospital and when they say they think they might have to operate on your brain. I was lucky it wasn’t a severe one, it could have been fata. I think that changed my view on life.’
So, too, did the night in November 2024 when he received a call from his nephew while out for dinner, a Wednesday night at 7pm, to tell him Cottee’s younger brother Paul had died of a cardiac arrest. ‘He was only 56. Gone. Wife, two kids. They were going to travel the world. He was a massive West Ham fan, my No 1 supporter. Why does it always happen to the good guys?
‘I had my niece saying to me, who's going to walk me down the aisle,’ says Cottee, now holding back tears. ‘I've got my nephew saying to me he’s got his 21st next year. What can you say? I couldn't give them the answers. All I keep saying is he's looking down on you, and he'll always be on your shoulder.’
Cottee’s mum, Carole, is in care home with dementia. ‘She doesn’t even remember I played for West Ham now,’ he adds. They have chosen not to tell her about Paul’s death.
‘It makes you appreciate life a little bit more.’ says Cottee, who recently became a grandfather for the first time. ‘It’s made me want to do more things, go on holidays, spend what I’ve got.’
He’s just come back from skiing in France. Like his scrapbooks, he’s got an old map on which he ticks off the countries he’s visited. ‘I think it’s 47 out of the 195. I haven’t been to Hawaii or Argentina.’
There are two things, above all others, he wants to do before he dies. ‘I want West Ham to win the FA Cup again – they need to be QPR on Sunday, I'm not sure that's going to happen – and I want England to win the World Cup.
‘I was at the Cup final in 1980 with my brother, it was one of the best days of my life. We celebrated in the fountains in Trafalgar Square.’
Cottee is spending the summer in Italy for his wife Karen’s 60th birthday, though he’s had to negotiate the original plan for them to fly back on July 19. That’s the day of the World Cup final.
‘I said let’s get back on the 18th...just in case.’