Man City pick intriguing ‘favourite’ De Bruyne replacement as Arsenal battle Chelsea for £65m defender

It’s once again time for us to round up the biggest, boldest and often most implausible Premier League transfer rumours from the past 24 hours – and today we’re going to kick things off with a story which concerns fans of Manchester City, Nottingham Forest and Tottenham Hotspur alike.

It comes from Caught Offside and concerns Manchester City’s plans to replace the outgoing Kevin de Bruyne – and they seem to have a three-man shortlist ready to go, which is topped by Bayer Leverkusen’s Florian Wirtz, as we suspected would be the case.

Leverkusen are in no hurry to sell Wirtz, however, and there’s even chatter than the player might sign a new contract with his club, so a Premier League player is now the “favourite” to make the move to the Etihad, it’s claimed – Morgan Gibbs-White, with City potentially prepared to bid around £60m for him.

If the more “achievable” signing of Gibbs-White doesn’t get over the line, then the report also suggests that Spurs’ James Maddison is “under consideration” for the role of replacing City’s legendary Belgian playmaker.

The 3AM Verdict: We suspect that City have every chance of signing Wirtz if they do indeed want him, and equally suspect that Gibbs-White would cost a little more than £60m – as would Maddison, come to that. We don’t think the Forest man is a true “favourite” as yet, but we do believe the interest is genuine enough.

Arsenal eye €75m Chelsea target

Over to Spanish rumourmongers Fichajes, now – they claim that Arsenal have joined the hunt for a Barcelona defender who had recently been linked with a move to Chelsea, and that Arsenal are “willing” to stump up €75m (£64.7m) to seal the deal.

The defender in question is Jules Koundé, who has cropped up in some transfer columns as an alternative to Chelsea’s preferred defensive target Marc Guéhi, and while Barcelona don’t wish to sell, apparently, it seems that a big enough bid will force their hand given their current financial status. The two clubs “will fight to secure his services” if the Catalan club do decide to sell, but that’s a decision that they’ve yet to make.

The 3AM Verdict: We’ll start with our occasional caveat when appraising Fichajes stories – they print an awful lot of transfer rumours which don’t come true. Leaving that aside, we’re slightly sceptical of the sincerity of Chelsea’s interest as it stands and now even more sceptical of Arsenal’s. No doubt they admire Koundé, but it seems more likely that they spend such big money elsewhere. We don’t see this battle happening as it stands, but perhaps we’re just cynical about the source.

West Ham to make ‘new offer’ for Turkish star

We’ll round things off today with a tale from Sport Witness, who reckon that West Ham United are leading the chase for Galatasaray winger Baris Alper Yilmaz, a Turkey international also wanted by both Nottingham Forest and Napoli.

The Hammers supposedly bid around €25m (£21.6m) for the versatile forward in the January transfer window but were rebuffed – now they plan “to make a new offer” this summer, although the article admits that it doesn’t know how much they might bid. Supposedly Yilmaz (who “looks set to pack his bags” and move club) is valued by Galatarsaray at €35m (£30.2m), which suggests that a fee could be agreed after a bit of haggling. No word on whether Forest intend to follow their interest up.

The 3AM Verdict: Yilmaz has been linked with a lot of clubs over the past year or so, to the point where we’re a bit wary of putting too much stock in any given story – but West Ham have come up before, the fee sounds reasonable enough, and we don’t see anything especially implausible in this transfer rumour. Don’t be surprised if other teams weigh in with bids of their own, however.