Marcus Rashford is apparently hot property?

Hello, and welcome to the weekly rumours roundup. An incredible proportion of rumours going around at the moment involve Marcus Rashford.

Rashford hasn’t performed well for Manchester United in a couple of seasons, and he’s on base wages in the neighborhood of £13m per season, not including likely insane bonuses. But that hasn’t stopped a slew of suitors from lining up to make proposals to Rashford, who Manchester United seem intent on getting out the door this January.

The list of clubs at least one fairly reputable outlet has linked Rashford to in the last week: AC Milan, Napoli, Juventus, Borussia Dortmund, Tottenham Hotspur. These clubs will be hoping they can unlock the Rashford of 2+ years ago, because the recent version has not been terribly productive. It’s not just this season he’s been poor; last season was no better.

It’s fair to ask: What does this guy even do? He theoretically is a versatile attacker who can play on the left, up top, or as an attacking midfielder. He was, once, both a great scorer and dribbler. But it’s been quite a while since he’s shown off those qualities for back-to-back matches. He is currently a guy who stands in roughly his assigned position and performs at roughly replacement level.

The teams interested in Rashford are essentially going to the casino. They don’t like their current situations and don’t see a path to success in the short term, so they’re strolling over to the roulette table and sticking a bunch of chips on black. 48% of the time, it works every time.

For Rashford to make a move to one of the above-listed clubs, both he and Man United will need to make financial compromises. All of them pay their top earners around half of what Rashford makes, and none of them will be thrilled to raise their wage ceiling for a player who is well off form and two years removed from his best.

I don’t think there’s actually anything wrong with going to the casino if you limit your bets. Taking Rashford on a 6-month loan where you pay half his wages and assume no hard obligation to buy him on a permanent transfer is not a terrible idea for a club like Milan or Spurs who cannot reach their preseason goals unless they hit on an outrageously low probability event.

But actually buying Rashford would be complete madness, which these teams have to know. Man United should accept that and try to engineer a loan to the club they think is most likely to pump up Rashford’s numbers and make him an attractive option for someone in the summer. —KM

More news and rumours

• Manchester United and Arsenal would both like to sign Bryan Mbeumo, who is going to cost somewhere in the range of £40-45m. I’m a big fan and would love to see him at one of England’s bigger clubs. He’s as close to a Saka replacement as Arsenal could hope to find, and he’s a good multi-position rotation attacker when everyone’s healthy too.

• Re: Yesterday’s Vlahović rumours, there’s also another funny one floating around about United swapping Joshua Zirkzee for him. These kinds of deals get proposed all the time and never actually go through but it’s not the worst idea, both would end up in a better tactical fit.

• More fun with silly swaps that kind of make sense for all parties but are never going to happen just due to all the complications: Jhon Duran for Randal Kolo Muani? Sure dude.

• The Daily Star says Bayern Munich could rival United for Viktor Gyökeres!!! But here’s the thing: No they will not.

• Everton are negotiating with Aston Villa to sign Jaden Philogene, which is a move I’d like a lot. Philogene hasn’t played much for Villa after they exercised their buyback clause to bring him in from Hull, and they’ll probably flip him for a small profit. We mentioned previously that Everton’s biggest need is a dribbly boy, and Philogene is certainly that.

• Chelsea are negotiating to sell Italian youngster Cesare Casadei to a Serie A club, with Torino and Napoli competing for his signature. The Blues will collect a nice £10ish million for this, but it won’t be enough to prevent them from having to do a May-June selling scramble to make PSR.

• If Casadei chooses Torino, Napoli might target another young Chelsea midfielder: Carney Chukwuemeka, who Chelsea are asking £30m for. They’re unlikely to get that, but he could go somewhere on loan to get himself in the shop window and collect that kind of fee come that aforementioned PSR scramble. I really like what I’ve seen of him but he’s got basically no data to evaluate.

• Galatasaray thinks Victor Osimhen is going to decide to just finish the season with them instead of pushing for a January transfer. Sure, why not.

• I feel like the head of recruitment at Wolverhampton Wanderers just hit sort by OBV (or xT, G+, or whatever possession value metric they like), then scouted the top 5 dudes. They’re about to sign Emmanuel Agbadou from Reims for about €20m. He doesn’t win a lot of aerials or a high percentage of his attempted tackles, but he’s an OBV monster.

If you enjoyed this newsletter, we’d appreciate it if you would forward it to a friend. If you’re that friend, welcome! You can subscribe to The Transfer Flow here. We also have a podcast where we go in depth on transfer news and rumours every week. We’re on YouTube here, and you can subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify by searching for “The Transfer Flow Podcast.”