Chelsea & Man Utd ‘ready January moves’ for £50m wonderkid as Aston Villa make move for Turkey star

Another day of gossipmongering has been and gone, and that means it’s time for 3 Added Minutes’ morning round-up of some of the biggest (and wildest) Premier League transfer rumours which you might have missed over the past 24 hours – starting with a story involving both Chelsea and Manchester United.

According to Caught Offsides, both sides are “readying January transfer window moves” for hotly-tipped Sporting winger Flávio Gonçalves, a 19-year-old whose performances in Portugal are attracting increasing attention from abroad.

The teenager, who has represented his country at Under-21 level, apparently has a release clause worth €60m (£50m) in a contract which runs until 2030. Sporting are said to be “desperate” to keep him around, but have yet to have any luck with persuading him to sign a new contract.

Both Chelsea and Manchester United are therefore preparing to “test the waters” with bids in the €45-50m (up to £42m) range to see if they can prise Gonçalves away. It’s not clear how likely they are to succeed, nor is the player’s own opinion on his future known.

The 3AM Verdict: Chelsea surely don’t need another young winger but this is a transfer that’s more up their street than Manchester United’s, who have bigger priorities this winter. We suspect that Gonçalves’ future won’t be resolved until the summer, and that the release clause is just about big enough to keep him in Portugal for a little bit longer.

Chelsea set to ‘invest’ in Argentine star who crushed Man Utd

Let’s move on to a second story involving Chelsea now, this time from Italian media outlet Tuttomercatoweb – they claim that the Blues have been “keeping a close eye” on Argentine international Nico Paz, and that they could “invest” in him after his dazzling display against Manchester United in the Champions League on Wednesday evening.

The 22-year-old scored twice and registered an assist for Como in their emphatic 4-1 win over the Red Devils, and Chelsea “continue to monitor him” in the hopes that they can get a deal done.

Not that a deal would be easy to do. Partly that’s because other elite European sides are keen (although not named in this report) but also because it would be very expensive – Como will expect to make a hefty profit on their €60m (£50m) outlay, and Real Madrid have an €80m (£67m) buyback clause which kicks in next summer. That provides a rough starting point, at least.

The 3AM Verdict: Chelsea are indeed tracking Paz but it’s highly unlikely that a deal is possible prior to next summer, and it’s far too early to know how likely it is that a deal might get done. Performances like Wednesday night’s won’t hurt, of course, but Blues fans shouldn’t hold their breath.

Aston Villa ‘actively trying to sign’ Turkish international

We’ll round off today’s column with a story for the Aston Villa fans among you – according to TEAMtalk, the Villans are “actively trying to sign” Fenerbahçe winger Oguz Aydin, a Turkey international who is under contract with the Yellow Canaries until 2028.

Citing a local journalist, they claim that Villa have already made contact with the 25-year-old Aydin’s representatives in the hopes of organising a deal, but none of the financial details appear to be known, and there’s no word on the kind of transfer fee that Fenerbahçe might demand.

Most of the rest of report concentrates on the impact such a move might have on the future of Alejandro Garnacho – Aydin is a left winger as well – and as such it’s not clear whether we’re looking at a likely January deal or something that’s a little bit further out.

The 3AM Verdict: A lack of details here makes it very hard to assess the likely accuracy of the report, but Aydin has the right kind of pedigree and will be in the last 18 months of his contract come January, so it’s certainly a plausible story at its heart. We’d need to know what the financials would look like before making a proper judgement, however.