A round-up of the latest Premier League transfer rumours - with news from Manchester United, Nottingham Forest, Liverpool, Chelsea and more.
It’s time for 3 Added Minutes’ regular morning round-up of the biggest (and wildest) new Premier League transfer rumours which you might have missed over the past 24 hours – and we kick today’s column off with a story which may interest fans of Manchester United and Nottingham Forest.
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According to gossipmongers Football Insider, United have “set their sights” on a deal for Forest centre-half Murillo and plan to launch a bid for the Brazilian next summer, having supposedly been “long-term admirers” of his talents.
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It would apparently take a “huge” bid to snap the 24-year-old up but it’s suggested that Nottingham Forest would reluctantly consider any offers as a result of his recent downturn in form. The precise price that might be required to persuade them isn’t revealed.
Murillo isn’t the only defender was linked with Manchester United in yesterday’s gossip columns, incidentally – TuttoJuve also claimed that the Red Devils are keen on versatile full-back Andrea Cambiaso, a former Manchester City target, but it’s said that Barcelona are more likely to make a bid as it stands. Apparently the Catalan club could strike a part-exchange deal involving Alejandro Balde, another alleged United target.
The 3AM Verdict: We don’t view Football Insider as a reliable source, to be perfectly blunt, and doubt that Manchester United have made any firm decisions about their primary transfer targets for next summer at this juncture. Maybe they do decide to bid for Murillo, but none of our sources suggest that there’s any reason to think it’s especially likely at this stage.
Liverpool show ‘really strong’ interest in Brighton star
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A word on Liverpool’s search for defensive reinforcements now, which comes courtesy of Caught Offside – they reckon that the Reds are showing “really strong” interest in Brighton defender Luka Vušković and that the Croatian’s potentially colossal price tag “won’t put them off.”
According to this report, Vušković is likely to set any suitors back £85-90m, with Brighton said to be taking a “pragmatic” stance on the prospect of a future sale. Bayern Munich are also named as a team who are keeping track of his progress at the Amex Stadium.
Liverpool do have at least one alternative lined up, in the form of Chelsea’s Levi Colwill, but apparently Xabi Alonso wants to keep the England international around. Chelsea supposedly plan to offer Colwill a contract extension soon and aren’t currently minded to consider any offers from elsewhere.
The 3AM Verdict: We’ve seen stories suggesting that quite a few elite sides are keen on Vušković after his impressive start to the season, and at the current pace we wouldn’t be surprised if the price tag was even higher than suggested here. We also wouldn’t be surprised if this was a transfer battle that got kicked down the road a year or two given the finances involved, however, and much like the Murillo story, it’s all very speculative at this early stage. There’s next to no chance that anyone tries to sign Vušković in January, after all.
Several Premier League sides chasing ‘new Varane’
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Let’s wrap things up with a story from TEAMtalk which suggests that a slew of Premier League sides are in the hunt for Lens defender Ismaëlo Ganiou, a 21-year-old who is described as the “new Raphaël Varane.”
Tottenham Hotspur, Fulham, Newcastle, Chelsea, Brentford and representatives of the City Football Group are all said to have watched him over the course of 2026, along with teams from Germany, Italy and France.
Details of a potential deal aren’t discussed in the report, and nor is the likely timeline, but Ganiou only signed a new contract with Lens over the summer which implies that a winter deal is very unlikely. The Ligue 1 outfit’s attitude towards selling him is not discussed.
The 3AM Verdict: Ganiou is growing in stature at Lens, but whenever we see a very long list of teams being linked with a player we can’t help but wonder whether they’re all really that interested, or whether an agent is throwing names about in order to try and improve his client’s profile. Maybe there is a dozen scouts in the stadium every single week, but it wouldn’t be the first time that an detail-light article like this was the product of artificial hype.