Ben Chilwell, Amad Diallo & Adrien Rabiot (Photos by Ryan Pierse, Steve Bardens & Alessandro Sabattini/Getty Images)
The market is still busy as we can see with some free agents, and one major update is we can now officially say that Adrien Rabiot is a new Marseille player. It’s another big signing for Roberto de Zerbi in this ambitious Marseille project, and he was involved in this deal, making the impossible possible.
As was widely reported throughout the summer, Rabiot also had other suitors. There were big, very big proposals from Turkey and Saudi but he only wanted to play in one of the European top leagues.
The Premier League was his dream but his salary requests were considered too expensive. OM have been excellent at working behind the scenes and getting it done for a reduced salary, convincing Rabiot of their project. They worked hard behind the scenes and now he’s a Marseille player on a two-year contract.
I keep getting a lot of questions about Liverpool and their situation with three star players – Mohamed Salah, Trent Alexander-Arnold and Virgil van Dijk – all out of contract at Anfield in 2025.
I can guarantee that for all three players the situation is the same, and that is that their priority is Liverpool, and conversations will follow. Let’s be patient and respect the parties negotiating and the timing of it all.
Chelsea reached an agreement months ago to sign Estevao Willian, and they really believe internally that they’ve signed a future star. He’s not just an ordinary player, or even a very good player with very good potential, Chelsea believe he’s something really special.
Elsewhere with Chelsea, Ben Chilwell is back with the Chelsea squad now for sure. Still, I don’t think he’s going to have a lot of space as Veiga and Cucurella remain main options at left-back, but he will fight for his place. For January, the expectation is still for Chilwell to look for a move somewhere else.
Bayern director Max Eberl has publicly confirmed that they are prepared to have face to face talks with Joshua Kimmich over a new deal. As we know, Kimmich is out of contract in 2025 and there has been plenty of speculation over his future.
Talks will take place, for sure; Bayern will offer Kimmich a new deal but it could be something that will take some time. Let’s see how talks will evolve, but Kimmich is open to speaking to Bayern for sure, despite links with Premier League clubs.
We heard a lot of rumours over the summer about Premier League clubs and others around Europe, but the reality is that the most concrete interest came from PSG. They ended up signing Joao Neves, and he was their top target in midfield, but they also considered internally if they could also sign Kimmich to play together in midfield with Neves.
Barcelona are working on a number of new contracts at the moment for players like Gavi, Ronald Araujo, Frenkie de Jong, but also for Pedri.
There’s also more good news for Real Madrid in terms of new contracts, as they recently tied down goalkeeper Andriy Lunin to avoid losing him as a free agent, and now the same is true with Ferland Mendy.
Gabriel Magalhaes was the hero for Arsenal against Tottenham at the weekend, and my fellow columnist Charles Watts discussed his performance and his future in his latest column here.
Manchester United fans have also been asking me about an important contract situation involving young winger Amad Diallo.
