Football transfer rumours: Chelsea's David Luiz to Manchester United?

Today’s fluff won’t let hard times stand in our way

Having been one of the mainstays of Chelsea’s title-winning campaign last season, this season David Luiz played all but three minutes of the first eight league games for which he was available (there was also a two-match suspension), then got dropped once and suddenly he’s ready to flounce out of the club altogether. He is, report the Star in their back-page exclusive, “said to be extremely unhappy following his bust-up with Antonio Conte” and also “frustrated that the club’s hierarchy have not backed him” and therefore “could be set for a reunion with José Mourinho”. That’s right, the grumpy Portuguese tactician “is ready to step in” and whisk the centre-back to Manchester, caring not a hoot that Chelsea are “sure to want at least the £34m they paid” for the frizz-faced ace. And Luiz is happy to work once again with Mourinho, who sidelined him at Chelsea, played him out of position or more frequently not at all, and then shipped him out to Paris.

Meanwhile it’s a hearty welcome back to the Mill for our old friend Virgil van Dijk, who is set to be the subject of yet another couple of months of interminable speculation. Yesterday his current manager, Mauricio Pellegrino, was asked if he could guarantee that there would be no move for the centre-back in the January transfer window and responded by starting to squirm. “I don’t know. I can’t control the market. You never know, because when we talk about money everybody has got a price,” he squeaked. “I can’t decide about that. This is a question for our owners.” Thus Van Dijk appears on the back page of the Mirror, who assert in loudest, brightest, largest headline fonts that as far as Liverpool and Jürgen Klopp are concerned he could be “yours for £70m”, and that Pellegrino’s response amounts to “a green light to make a January bid”.

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