Shamrock Rovers player Victor Ozhianvuna
Victor Ozhianvuna will be joining the Premier League champions soon
Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City and Newcastle have all arranged future transfers in the relentless pursuit of teenage talent.
The 2026 summer transfer window was busy enough, but teams are using the opportunity to pre-arrange transfers years in advance now to steal a march on their rivals too.
Chelsea are chief among them but plenty of other sides are indulging in the practice. These are the upcoming transfers sorted for future windows involving Premier League clubs.
Victor Ozhianvuna (Shamrock Rovers to Arsenal, £1.73m, January 2027) Arsenal were linked with Mason Melia as part of their drive to become a landing spot for Ireland’s best young talents. They lost out in that race to Spurs in January 2026 but managed to secure a pre-contract deal for Ohzianvuna to arrive 12 months later.
Club Brugge offered an immediate exit and path to the first team while Arsenal cannot bring the versatile forward in until after he turns 18 in January 2027, but all parties felt another year or so developing in Ireland before moving would be beneficial.
Ozhianvuna will join on a four-and-a-half-year contract with add-ons which could double the initial fee, and a sell-on clause, having caught Arsenal’s eye during a 2023 summer tournament staged at the club’s academy.
He will even join the Arsenal youth revolution with some European seasoning in the Conference League, and a whole lot of LOI minutes under his belt.
Djylian N’Guessan (Saint-Etienne to Liverpool, £4.3m, January 2027) There are pats on the back all round for Liverpool’s global talent team, which has undoubtedly put in the hours of late.
Among their many signings and hopeful success stories is N’Guessan, the Saint-Etienne forward who was named in the 2025 U17 Euros Team of the Tournament and will be spending at the very least the first half of the season on loan with Brest in Ligue Un.
His Liverpool move will be made official in January, at which point the Reds retain the option of bringing him back from that Brest spell, keeping him stationed there or loaning him elsewhere.
Honest Ahanor (Atalanta to Chelsea, £40m, July 2027) It is phenomenal work of Chelsea to a) basically loan out a teenager before they have even actually signed them, and b) to make a signing seemingly entirely based on whatever the opposite of nominative determinism is.
Chelsea themselves say defender Ahanor will be ‘officially joining in 2027’, which is their way of getting around the logistics of signing a player they want to immediately send to a club they have already farmed someone out to.
Having leant Axel Disasi to Crystal Palace already in the summer 2026 window, they could not loan another player to them. So the Eagles tangled themselves in the transfer web by borrowing Ahanor from Atalanta instead, at the same time it was announced that the Italy international would be joining Chelsea permanently in 12 months’ time.
By the time Atalanta receive their £40m payment from the Blues it will have been two years since he represented them – and Ahanor only played for them 35 times in his solitary season in Bergamo.
Johan Martinez (Independiente del Valle to Newcastle, £2.8m, July 2027) Be prepared to read a fair bit about Ecuador’s most productive conveyor belt of footballing talent.
“Independiente del Valle have a strong reputation for developing young players and Johan has undoubtedly benefited from that environment,” said Newcastle sporting director Ross Wilson upon the announcement of Martinez’s future signing.
“He will continue his progress there while we maintain a close connection with his development, and we look forward to welcoming him to Newcastle next year.”
It was added that Newcastle “beat off serious competition from leading clubs across Europe to bring Johan to Newcastle United”. And that is quite the recruitment ploy.
The 17-year-old winger recently impressed for fourth-placed Ecuador at the South American U17 Championships, and will break Newcastle hearts by being tempted elsewhere within the next half-decade.
Samuel Martinez (Atletico Nacional to Liverpool, £750,000, July 2027) In what has been described as a ‘historic transfer’ by one of the transfer journalists breathlessly reporting on the global pursuit of a midfielder born on the same day Federico Macheda scored *that* goal against Aston Villa, Martinez will link up with Liverpool when he becomes of age.
Colombia were the winners of that aforementioned South American U17 Championships, with Martinez playing every game and assisting the opening goal in the 4-0 final rout of Argentina.
Liverpool might expect a similar level of performance from Martinez at the U17 World Cup in Qatar this November, having pipped Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund and Barcelona to this particular post.
Andria Bartishvili (FC Kolkheti to Arsenal, £3.8m, July 2027) Rather lazily and predictably branded ‘the next Khvicha Kvaratskhelia’ in some circles, fellow Georgian forward Bartishvili will be hoping to save Arsenal a fair few millions in the coming years.
The Gunners will be watching intently as Bartishvili continues to gain valuable experience on loan at Iberia 1999, for whom he has scored a couple of goals and should feature in the Conference League against Sint-Truiden, Mjallby, Copenhagen, Getafe, Red Star Belgrade and Jablonec in the league phase.
Edwin and Holger Quintero (Independiente del Valle to Arsenal, £9m, August 2027) “We can recruit the best talent that is out there,” said Mikel Arteta, while Piero Hincapie, an Ecuadorean from the same product line as the Quintero twins, feels they are “both incredible players” and “such good footballers”.
Edwin is a left-footed right-winger, while Holger is a right-footed midfielder. And they will join on five-year deals when the time comes.
Arsenal, in a statement on their own website, confirmed they ‘will be collaborating closely with Independiente del Valle on the development and well-being of both Edwin and Holger’ until the twins arrive and are shown how to take corners.
Cavan Sullivan (Philadelphia Union to Manchester City, £3.8m, January 2028) “I can’t even believe you will be playing at sort of that level with pressure on you at 15,” said Gary Neville, who also implored the world to “definitely just let him breathe, let him enjoy himself” and not “put too much pressure on him”.
Sullivan signed the richest homegrown contract in MLS history at just 14, contained within which is a clause tying him to a pre-arranged transfer to Manchester City when he turns a positively ancient 18.
The midfielder has built quite the reputation on the youth scene at club and international level, attracting interest from Borussia Dortmund, Real Madrid and Bayern Munich.
But Sullivan himself cited the lure of signing for Union, with whom he has familial ties, with an in-built pathway to Europe when he has been given time and patience to develop.
That process is still ongoing, but the 16-year-old recently became one of the youngest scorers in MLS history and has trained with Manchester City.
Sidy Barhama Ndiaye (Diambars FC to Liverpool, £1m, January 2028) While Rio Ngumoha is all the rage now, the 18-year-old will be practically over the hill and retired soon enough and there is a perennial need to source the next prodigy.
Ndiaye is over a year younger and recently caught the eye at the U17 AFCON, featuring in every game for a Senegal side knocked out on penalties in the quarters.
Liverpool quickly moved to secure the future of a boy predictably dubbed ‘the next Mane’, who spent time training with the club last summer and even made a couple of impressive appearances for the U18s.
A forward who can play on either side, Ndiaye is ineligible to join until after his 18th birthday. That is, ludicrously enough, not for another 15 months.
Deinner Ordonez (Independiente del Valle to Chelsea, unknown fee, January 2028) It has not been revealed either how much Chelsea will pay for Ordonez, nor the precise length of the presumably ludicrous long-term contract he will sign, but the 16-year-old’s arranged marriage to the Blues has been confirmed.
The centre-half will have to wait until the first transfer window after he turns 18 to make his move to the Premier League.
Liverpool were said to be interested and the Daily Mail even referenced youth scouts calling Ordonez ‘the best player of his age-group in the whole of South America’.
But Chelsea won the race for the latest player coming off the same product line as Moises Caicedo, Kendry Paez, Piero Hincapie and Willian Pacho.