Mudryk, Tosin, Alvarez, MGW among 10 Premier League transfers that could go through on deadline day | OneFootball

Remember when, in a brief outbreak of sanity, the Premier League decided to dabble with the idea of having the transfer window and the actual season be completely separate entities, one finishing before the other began? And also with the deadline at some kind of civilised hour like 5pm?

But then the rest of the leagues went ‘lol, no’ so that was that? And now everyone just agrees that having an entire day of mass hysteria and panic, human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, Spurs and Chelsea doing business with each other and hundreds of million pounds changing hands long into the night is actually definitely the best way to run these billion-dollar companies?

Good, isn’t it? Anyway. Another deadline day is upon us. Loads of stuff will happen. Several things will just as importantly not happen, and the only absolute cast-iron guarantee is that, despite the deadline being an absurd 11pm there will still be at least three f**king bastard deal sheets put in and one of them will be from Fulham.

Anyway. Let’s not get angry about the sure and certain knowledge we’ll be F5ing Ornstein’s Twitter at 1am until later in the day, for our own sanity if nothing else. Let’s for now look at literally 10 deals that could happen today.

Iliman Ndiaye to Manchester City This one seems fairly nailed on, but it’s part of a chaotic chain of transfers that has had serious implications for other clubs.

It all stems from Liverpool’s failure to land a suitable replacement for Cody Gakpo, who had first appeared Spurs-bound and then City-bound but is now Liverpool-remaining.

That sent City to the next name on their list, which was also the next name on Tottenham’s list, just across town from Gakpo. Ndiaye had appeared close to joining Spurs but may owe a huge debt to Richarlison. His apparent reluctance to rush back into the arms of his former club slowed progress on the related-but-separate deals between Spurs and Everton, allowing City to nip in once the Gakpo deal hit the skids.

It’s all good clean late-window fun, this. And has sent Spurs into such a panic spiral that in the space of 48 hours they’ve gone from Gakpo (a player with flaws but who fills an obvious goalscoring hole in that Spurs attack) to Ndiaye (more vibes-based than Gakpo but still obviously an excellent choice) to…

Mykhailo Mudryk to Tottenham You’re statistically more likely to step in a large fresh pile of rocking-horse sh*t than stumble upon a transfer deal between Chelsea and Tottenham, yet today we may get not one but two of the things.

Chelsea and Tottenham transfer deals, that is. Not the rocking-horse sh*t. Although on this most glorious and unpredictable of days, who knows?

We’re not saying Spurs, having spent the vast bulk of the transfer window making eye-catchingly decisive and/or long-planned moves, have hit the big red panic button after a disastrous start to the season and a couple of late transfer setbacks, but we’re also not not saying that.

It’s a spectacularly Spursy transfer, this, because the overwhelming likelihood is that it all goes very Timo Werner. But there is the undeniable if slim potential for it to instead be revolutionary and brilliant. Let’s not forget that Mudryk was one of the most sought-after stars in the game when he made his move to Stamford Bridge. Now we must also not forget that an awful lot has happened in Mudryk’s career since that point, almost none of it good.

Those hoping this isn’t catastrophic appear to be pinning a large amount on the fact Mudryk has played under Roberto De Zerbi before at Shakhtar Donetsk. Who knows, it might be enough. But we have our doubts. Serious doubts.

We’re also annoyed that a return to meaningful action for a player who’s been out of competitive football for longer than Dejan Kulusevski means we’ll have to learn all over again where the y’s and i’s go in his name, and that’s a commitment we could do without.

Talk is that Spurs have a £75m option to make Mudryk’s loan permanent, which is on the face of it a laughable number. But on the other hand, given it’s an option rather than obligation, makes some kind of sense. If they’re even considering activating that then they’ve already pulled a Homer with this deal anyway.

Tosin Adarabioyo to Tottenham Two Chelsea cast-offs, Tottenham? Two? That’s insane. Fair to say Chelsea fans aren’t exactly distraught by the idea of the error-prone and clumsy Tosin joining Mudryk on the previously rarely-trodden path from Stamford Bridge to the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.

And Spurs do have to suck it up and pay a fee for a permanent deal here to allow the requisite wriggle room for the higher-fee, higher-risk Mudryk transfer to be an initial loan.

Which all means the funniest outcome now is for Spurs to agree a permanent deal they don’t really want for Tosin, but needs must because they need another centre-back and a homegrown one at that, only for the Mudryk deal to collapse anyway. And where Spurs are concerned, you can usually rely on the funniest outcome coming in clutch.

Morgan Gibbs-White to Chelsea A potential new entry here for the ‘Whatever happens in football, the joke is always on Spurs’ files. Again, you can’t deny the deliciousness of the idea that the slight thawing of relationship between Spurs and Chelsea – at boardroom level at least – might see Spurs chucking a bunch of cash Chelsea’s way only for that cash to then be spent on a player Spurs have desperately and openly coveted for well over a year.

They thought they had him last year but Mr Marinakis had other ideas. Given the general vibe of this summer’s transfer window has been Big Rich Clubs throwing silly money at good players from Smaller Less Rich Clubs, there’s been surprisingly little talk of the consistently excellent Gibbs-White – certainly compared to last summer – making a move anywhere despite him looking like the very ideal kind of thing for at least half of those cash-flashing clubs.

That could all change today, though, with Chelsea casting their eyes to the midlands if they need a replacement for…

Enzo Fernandez to Manchester City There’s always one, isn’t there? One proper summer saga that reaches deadline day with no definitive conclusion in sight either way. Chelsea set their own deadline for the deal to happen. It obviously didn’t happen before that deadline. It just as obviously still could before the actual deadline. Especially given the player has been agitating for the move really very openly indeed and the sums of money Man City are suggesting could be involved would turn heads at any club, never mind at one so unapologetically and cynically in the player-trading profit-making game as Chelsea.

There’s definitely been a slight shift on that front from Chelsea since the appointment of Xabi Alonso. This window has seen at least a nod towards building a functional football squad rather than just a healthy portfolio of assets. They’ve even bought a goalkeeper, for chrissakes.

But Chelsea are still Chelsea, and it’s still an absurd sum of money for a player who clearly wants out. Expect this to be the deal that keeps everyone glued to X-formerly-Twitter and allows Sky Sports News and assorted Live Transfer Blogs (ahem) to maintain the pretence that Things Are Constantly Happening late into the evening.

Tottenham’s Bomb Squad to Assorted Locations Pape Sarr is off to Juventus on an initial loan, and Kevin Danso is seemingly Sunderland-bound after apparently taking understandable exception to finding himself below a 400-year-old Ben Davies in De Zerbi’s centre-back pecking order and Richarlison… well, we assume he’s off somewhere.

Maybe not Everton as we all thought, given the events of the last couple of days. But having turned down other options throughout the summer through a desire to remain in the Premier League it does seem odd that he’s quite so sniffy about a return to a former club where he is so loved.

The clear sense from his social media statement is that Richarlison’s issue is less with the idea of returning to Everton and more with being railroaded into doing anything that’s all a bit last-minute and rushed.

Understandable and admirable that may be, but he’s almost certainly now going to end up doing something even more last-minute and rushed.

Ibrahim Mbaye to Aston Villa Having been linked with Liverpool all summer, often as an addendum in stories mainly about Bradley Barcola, 18-year-old winger Mbaye is now on the verge of instead completing a move to Aston Villa.

He was in the stands – along with Taylor Harwood-Bellis, whose move from Southampton should also be confirmed today – for last night’s game against Arsenal. So it really would be quite something if that went tits up now, despite continued nervy rumblings that Liverpool might yet attempt some sort of late hijackery.

Gabriel Martinelli to Al Hilal Turned down a move to Turkey to try and secure a move that kept him in Europe’s Big Leagues instead. That didn’t happen, so it’s off to Saudi he will go.

Personal terms are still to be thrashed out, but once players have made sufficient peace with the idea of Saudi semi-retirement to enter into talks, it’s rarely too much of a problem to iron out the precise details of the unimaginable wealth that will pour forth to help silence those nagging voices that might otherwise keep a man awake at night.

Folarin Balogun to Everton Textbook piece of late-window domino-falling here, with Ndiaye’s move to City sending Everton in the direction of Monaco for the former Arsenal man and unwitting star of the Trump-Infantino Funtime Corruption Hour back in the summer. You remember.

Certainly be interesting to see how Balogun goes if he were to return to England a better and more rounded player than the Arsenal youth. Based on the World Cup, he’ll be absolutely fine as long as Trump keeps his big orange beak out.

Julian Alvarez to Arsenal This one is unlikely, but perhaps the most interesting potential deadline-day storyline of the lot. Certainly we’d make Alvarez to Arsenal the biggest possible piece of action today that isn’t already basically long odds-on to happen.

Essentially it boils down to what Alvarez wants. We know what he really wants: to join Barcelona. Atletico Madrid, though, have made it clear that not selling him to their domestic rivals is a matter of principle and even dignity, declaring the chances of such a deal happening as zero per cent.

Arsenal themselves have even reduced the chances further still, were such a thing mathematically possible which it isn’t, by flogging Barca a used Gabriel Jesus to boost their striker stocks.

So Alvarez’s choices are: stay at Atleti and hope that the mood around a move to Barcelona has altered by the winter, or return to the Premier League and try his luck with the likely champions.

The appeal of Barcelona is obvious because they are Barcelona, but Arsenal looks a mighty tempting option from where we’re sat. Which is in our pants watching Sky Sports News and already regretting every decision that led us to this point on a sunny September morning. So we’re perhaps not the best judge.