Those wisps of smoke you can see in the sky over east London are emanating from the hole being burnt in West Ham’s pocket by £105m of Declan Rice revenue, and Hammers boss David Moyes seems to have convinced his employers to invest a sizeable chunk of it in Conor Gallagher. Chelsea have rejected a £40m offer for their impressive midfielder, who is surplus to requirements at the club despite having featured prominently in pre-season warm-up games in the USA. Tottenham are also interested in taking Gallagher off Chelsea’s hands and see him as an ideal replacement for Pierre-Emile Højbjerg, who continues to agitate for a move to Atlético Madrid. Aston Villa’s Douglas Luiz and Barcelona’s Ivorian midfielder Franck Kessié are also rumoured to be inching their way across Tottenham’s radar.
While the slim but not entirely implausible possibility of Kylian Mbappé spending his gap year in Riyadh has been covered extensively elsewhere, Al-Hilal’s £269m bid has also sparked speculation that the French striker may end up spending next season on loan in the Premier League. Excluded from the Paris Saint-Germain squad that travelled to Japan for a pre-season tour, the striker will need to play football somewhere in order to maintain his fitness for next summer’s Euros if he remains frozen out of Luis Enrique’s squad in Paris. Chelsea and Spurs (no, really) have been mooted as possible loan destinations.
