Football transfer rumours: Cesc Fàbregas to Milan or Manchester United?

Milan are preparing a £27m summer offer for Cesc Fàbregas, who they tried to buy in the summer and loan in January, but who despite starting only six league games for Chelsea this season would prefer to stay in London given the choice, thank you very much. Watching developments with interest, however, is long-term admirer José Mourinho, who could step in if it looks like Chelsea are willing to let the nearly-30-year-old leave, and whisk him to Manchester United instead.

There’s extreme confusion this morning surrounding the future of Andy Carroll, with Sky Sports reporting that “West Ham have turned down three offers from Chinese Super League clubs” because “the striker is not for sale”, the Mail saying similar, and the Telegraph insisting that “West Ham are willing to cash in on Carroll” and that he “has been offered to clubs in China”. So take your pick. The Hammers could, the Telegraph insists, be tempted to bid for an increasingly disgruntled Christian Benteke, who is also attracting interest from Italy, Germany, Spain and possibly Chelsea.

The tourist board of Eupen, a small town of some 18,000 people near Belgium’s border with Germany, say it “is full of magnificent burgher houses, churches and fountains”, offers guests “the culinary delicacies of the region” and “is the starting point for a variety of interesting nature and adventure trails for hikers and cyclists”. And foreign visitors are flocking to Eupen at the moment, though not for any of those reasons. They’re there to see Henry Onyekuru, the local football team’s 19-year-old Nigerian winger, who will be sold in the summer for around £6m and has attracted representatives of Sevilla, Borussia Dortmund, Mönchengladbach, Lille, Arsenal and Chelsea in recent weeks, having nearly joined Celtic in January.

Sunderland have drawn up two summer transfer-market want lists, one to be used after relegation and the other if they avoid the dreaded trap door. On the latter list, apparently, lies the name of Benfica’s Greek midfielder Andreas Samaris.

Arsène Wenger has snubbed a quadruple-your-money offer from an unnamed Chinese club, though whether that means he’s actually going to sign a new contract with Arsenal, we don’t know. And Tianjin Quanjian have owned up to being the team behind a £90m January approach for Chelsea’s Diego Costa, and what’s more their owner, Shu Yuhui, has promised more of the same in the summer. “I can assure you the new players will be on the same level as Costa,” he said. “There is no limit to our transfer budget. We target whoever we want.”

One person who’s definitely going nowhere soon is Virgil van Dijk, who has been reminded by the Southampton chairman, Ralph Krueger, that he is “very committed to us for a long time and we don’t see anything but that in our future”, despite potentially lucrative interest from Liverpool and Manchester City. His won’t be the only non-transfer in Southampton, though, with Krueger insisting the days of annual summer deal-jamborees are over. “We don’t want to do what we did in the last three summers,” he said. “We feel confident this summer will be a lot quieter.”

Talking of transfers that definitely won’t happen, which isn’t really our job but needs must, Romelu Lukaku’s agent has declared he is “99.9999% sure” his client will sign a new deal at Everton.