£30m Chelsea star set for shock exit as Spurs ready bid for Bournemouth prospect

Welcome to the weekend and – of course – welcome to our daily run-through of the biggest and boldest new Premier League transfer rumours. Today, we’ve got news for fans of Tottenham Hotspur, Bournemouth and Brighton, but we’re going to start off by looking at a story concern a shock departure from Stamford Bridge…

According to Fabrizio Romano’s Daily Briefing (paywalled), Chelsea are already getting ready to dispose of summer signing Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall, who arrived in a deal worth £30m from Leicester City just a few months ago but has barely been seen in the Premier League since.

Apparently the London club are “open” to allowing him to leave, with Manchester United and Tottenham among high-profile teams interested in a prospective loan move. Commenting on Romano’s story, TeamTalk also cite a claim from a (frustratingly unnamed) Spanish source that Aston Villa could in fact be at the head of the queue for the midfielder.

The 3AM Verdict: Enzo Maresca certainly doesn’t seem to be in the mood to rotate his squad and give players down the pecking order a chance, so it makes sense that some players could leave on loan – but it’s remarkable that Chelsea can still be spending so much money on players they have no real use for. For our money, Manchester United don’t make much sense given the players they already have access to, while Spurs have been chasing midfielder reinforcements for a while.

London clubs in for £50m man

Sticking with both Chelsea and Spurs, Caught Offside are carrying a story which sees both sides considering a move for Bournemouth’s young Ukrainian defender Illia Zabarnyi.

The 22-year-old centre-back has been gradually accumulating admirers since making the switch to Dean Court in 2023, but it’s not claimed that both teams have been tracking him for a while and are now “eager” to sign him – despite the fact that he has only just penned a new five-year deal at his current club. Apparently, £50m would be required to prise him away.

The 3AM Verdict: We very much doubt this one. He’s just committed his future to Bournemouth and while they’d probably take £50m, that’s probably more than a club will actually spend on him. Zabarnyi has a bright future, but we can’t see this move happening at that price tag over the next couple of transfer windows.

Spurs swooping for Seagull

We’re going to end with another Spurs-related nugget of transfer news, as it happens – Football Transfers reckon that Ange Postecoglou’s side are “exploring a move” for Brighton right-back Tariq Lamptey, whose contract is up at the end of the season.

The 24-year-old has struggled to regain his starting spot at the Amex Stadium after a rough run of injuries, so Brighton are keen to sell him in January to make a little bit of money instead of losing him on a free transfer. Everton are also potentially interested, although whether either club would move in January or simply wait until the summer isn’t clear.

The 3AM Verdict: This is the second time we’ve seen Lamptey’s name crop up this week – he was linked with West Ham United recently, too. Certainly it seems highly unlikely that he’s still in Sussex come the start of next season, but we think we’re still in a very speculative stage of proceedings with no clear-cut pattern emerging from reports as to which clubs want him and whether they’ll look to make it happen this winter or not.