Nearly December, isn’t it? It’ll be the Busy Festive Period before you know it. And after that, the January transfer window, traditionally the dampest of all football squibs.

But we’ll not let that stop us getting far too excited far too early and start shouting loudly into the void about which players need to be making moves when 2025 rolls around. We’ve got these 10 just for starters.

Sergio Reguilon (Tottenham)
We’ll be honest here. We thought he’d already left. If indeed we’d thought about him at all. Having spent last season on loan at Manchester United and Brentford and then been essentially invisible this season, surely we can all be forgiven for just assuming he was in Turkey or somewhere on another loan, couldn’t we?

Only once – in the Carabao Cup at Coventry – has Reguilon made it even as far as the bench for a Spurs team that has a calendar as busy as anyone with all those Europa League games you’re expected to plough through these days.

Given how many youngsters are being named on Premier League benches by Ange Postecoglou – 16-year-old Malachi Hardy and 17-year-old Callum Olusesi were among the subs at City on a memorable Saturday evening – the total absence of a 27-year-old Spain international feels particularly pointed.

His contract is up in the summer anyway and we don’t think we’re getting ahead of ourselves in suggesting it’s unlikely he’ll be signing a new one. Might as well get a six-month head-start somewhere else with greater prospects than going to Coventry and sitting on a bench.

Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall (Chelsea)
Chelsea have spent the entire season proving pretty much everyone wrong. They don’t even need Cole Palmer to play well for them to win these days, which is a welcome new bit.

Enzo Maresca has quietly done the near impossible of knitting things together and forming something coherent and functional out of it all. And even Chelsea’s wildly esoteric and eccentric approach to squad-building doesn’t look as mad now as it did a few months ago. The bomb squad has generally been bombed out and everyone left feels pretty significant.

Except Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall. We can all retain a tiny sliver of smugness for being right about what always looked a baffling signing.

He has played 583 minutes of football this season, but do not be deceived by that number. Nearly 400 of those minutes have come in the Europa Conference and while yes, Chelsea do need bodies for those Thursday night formalities we don’t think they need a £40m specialist to negotiate that group stage. A further 147 minutes have come in the Carabao, which is no longer a concern after defeat to Newcastle, leaving just 44 minutes of Premier League action.

He did get on in the 91st minute at Leicester at the weekend, just in time to see his old club score their goal.

He’s not good enough for Chelsea’s midfield and there’s no shame in that. But he’s surely better than Conference League specialist, a niche no player should be occupying at 26 years of age.

Ben Chilwell (Chelsea)
But do you know what’s worse than being a Conference League specialist? Not even being in the Conference League squad.

We generally try not to have two players from the same club in these things, but come on. Chilwell’s season consists of 45 minutes of Carabao at Barrow and that’s it.

He can’t say the manager has been disingenuous, either. Maresca said in August it was “better to leave” and adding “Chilwell is a lovely guy but because of his position he is going to struggle with us” which has always tickled us for being so very close to Gareth Keenan’s assessment of Anton the forklift truck driver.

In September, Maresca doubled down. “The idea for him was to leave.” Sure, Maresca didn’t actually say anything about Chilwell needing great big platform shoes just to reach the pedals because of his little legs, but you knew that’s what he meant.

Manchester United have been linked, which we’re all in favour of. Especially when Chilwell duly joins Mason Mount in Thomas Tuchel’s first England squad a couple of months later.

Casemiro (Manchester United)
It was already a struggle to keep up with the far more ponderous requirements of Erik Ten Hag’s football, but we probably didn’t actually need a demonstration of how much harder the fading Brazilian might find being part of a Rubem Amorim double-pivot. Especially alongside Christian Eriksen. Both have been truly wonderful footballers, but neither is about to do all the running for the other in a midfield that requires high energy and great industry as well as craft and nous.

Casemiro and indeed Eriksen possess the latter qualities in spades, but alas not so much of the former.

Just go and have a nice lucrative rest in Saudi or something, fella. Lord knows he’s earned it. There is nothing for Casemiro to prove to anyone anywhere, and even if there were it surely isn’t going to happen for him in the brave new world Amorim wants to craft at Old Trafford.

MORE MAN UTD COVERAGE ON F365…
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👉 Mailbox: Ruben Amorim at Man Utd: ‘New Manager Thud anyone?’
👉 Good luck Ruben Amorim; Man Utd are ‘a fat, lazy, bloated corpse of a club’

Oleksandr Zinchenko (Arsenal)
He’s had an injury-disrupted season which hasn’t helped, but it really does appear like Arsenal have now outgrown him just as City did before.

There’s no shame in it, and from the outside we’ll perhaps never truly understand how important his mentality and influence on Arsenal’s transformation from also-rans to heavyweight contenders really was. But it’s a waning influence for a player who hasn’t started a Premier League game since the opening day of the season and surely has more to offer somewhere else where the need for his experience is greater in 2025.

At 27 he is surely far too young for a kind of bit-part mentor role. He made 27 Premier League appearances in each of his first two seasons at Arsenal but is going to get nowhere near that this time around having made just a few brief appearances off the bench since that deceptive August start.

Miguel Almiron (Newcastle)
There are a few contenders knocking around at Newcastle, but none more obvious than Almiron who finds himself languishing well behind not just Anthony Gordon but also Jacob Murphy in the St James’ Park pecking order.

That small yet very real period of time where Almiron was genuinely one of the most destructive players in the Premier League feels a long time ago now, with his only Premier League start of the season coming last month in the 2-1 defeat at Chelsea. He hasn’t made it onto the pitch in November.

There was interest in the summer from the usual suspects – Turkey, Saudi, South America and even the US – but Newcastle’s asking price proved a stumbling block. A figure of £15m has been mooted, which does sound like it might be slightly optimistic. Does feel like it would be in everyone’s best interests here if something could be agreed, though.

Marc Guehi (Crystal Palace)
Always two ways of looking at ‘needs a January move’, of course. The first, most obvious one – and the one we always lean most heavily towards – is those players who have fallen out of favour and need to get off their arses and get some minutes under their belts in the second half of the season.

The other way to look at it is to consider a player who is playing lots of football which might not really be doing them much good.

Palace, to their credit, fought hard to keep Guehi out of Newcastle’s clutches in the summer but it’s been a harrowing season at Selhurst Park thus far. They won’t thank us for now trying to sell one of their best players, but should take some comfort in the fact absolutely nobody listens to us for very obvious and correct reasons so it literally doesn’t matter.

Still, though. Guehi had a brilliant summer with England and there is a clear chance right there for him to establish himself as a first-choice starting centre-back under the new manager in 2025. That’s going to be a lot harder to achieve at a club flailing around as Palace currently are. You’d imagine Palace are going to spend January facing a lot of the questions they had to repeatedly answer in the summer, only this time from a far less encouraging position.

Joe Gomez (Liverpool)
The real fun with potential Liverpool departures doesn’t really kick in until next summer of course, although any contract shenanigans involving Trent Alexander-Arnold, Ibrahima Konate and above all Mo Salah retain the worrying potential to destabilise what is a very stable ship at this time.

Still, you wouldn’t expect anyone to be rushing for the January exit given the potential Liverpool’s currently near-flawless season now possesses, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t players who might want to think about it.

Gomez’s only starts this season have come in the Carabao and at 27 with an England place to win back he can’t be withering on the bench like this. Even if only on loan, he surely needs to get out there and play some football.

And he wouldn’t be short of high-level suitors either. Newcastle were keen in the summer and surely would be again, while Aston Villa have also been suggested as a possibility.

John Stones (Manchester City)
Surely everybody wants to get off the sinking Manchester City ship, but Stones has more reason than most.

He’s been England’s best defender for a good while and at 30 should now be at something approaching his peak. But it really doesn’t feel like it at all, does it? He’s just not getting enough game time at City, which means when he does play he looks rusty as hell, which means he doesn’t get enough game time, which means when he does play…

It’s becoming a vicious circle, and one that jeopardises his England place at a time when England could really do with his experience and tournament know-how. Needs to go somewhere where he can actually play on a regular basis to get himself back up to speed; not stay somewhere that when he does finally get to start a game he gets hauled off at half-time because Spurs have just pure taken the piss.

That he is still playing so little football despite Ruben Dias’ injury really is damning.

Emi Buendia (Aston Villa)
He’s played 208 minutes of football for Aston Villa this season, which is already bad enough even before you consider the fact that all but 40 of those minutes have come in the Carabao, a tournament of no further relevance for Villa this season after a pretty drab home defeat to Crystal Palace.

Outside his two starts in that competition, Buendia has become the ultimate brief-cameo-off-the-bench man. He’s actually made seven appearances across the Premier League and Champions League which doesn’t seem bad at all until you remember that we mentioned ’40 minutes’ earlier.

Ten minutes in the Champions League defeat to Club Brugge has been his most substantial contribution in one of the two competitions where Villa’s main focus this season lies. It’s a pretty clear indication that it might be time to start looking elsewhere for more gainful employment.

After Ruben Amorim‘s arrival, simperingly welcomed by the stab-you-in-the-back-at-the-first-chance media plus their typically we-don’t-know-how-to-beat-Ipswich performance which was typically inept, as opposed to ‘utopian’, Peter (talk about over-vaunting) it’d be easy to think: new manager, new system, new success. But it looked more like: new manager, new system, same old shite.

Though sometimes a new manager leads to an uptick in form, the facts suggest any new manager bounce is temporary and a return to the mean usually occurs. Which, since United are mid-table, doesn’t bode well for those looking for immediate success. Their mediocrity is well-established and has decade-long roots. Amorim doesn’t have immediate solutions, nor should he be expected to until he’s got rid of the majority of these basket cases.

But this is Manchester United, the worst big club in the world with an expensively assembled bunch of second-rate talent who don’t even work hard and seem to think running is beneath them. Their stats in that regard are terrible.

Of course, many will lie to themselves and claim to be those responsible fans who are not interested in immediate success, but the rate which clubs get through managers – every 784 days in May 2024 – suggests otherwise. But a football club is much more than the manager and players, which are usually all that the manager can affect.

READ: Amorim Watch: New Man Utd manager rubs his nose a lot and we get bored

And Manchester United, this money-generating behemoth, is unlike any other club, meaning it is a much bigger animal to turn around or put on a different trajectory and thus it’s going to take a lot more than a new system to install a consistently successful era.

Is there any sign this is likely to happen? There is money to be made working for Manchester United and it will always attract people who talk a good game, wearing those blue suits with long, pointy tan shoes who speak in jargon designed to suggest they know what they’re talking about without committing themselves to any action that proves they don’t. And, as I’m sure you know from your own experience at work, bullshit merchants are everywhere. United needs to identify them and get rid; they’re dragging the club down.

In the 90s and early 2000s United were still a ‘normal’ club, connected to the real world and real people, but now, they’ve benefited from huge money for so long that such a grasp on reality has been lost. The years of exploiting the brand so successfully so that there is always plenty of money to waste has obviously and nakedly led to an ill-considered transfer strategy and that’s probably to over-rate it. A lot of it looks like when you meet a rich person desperately trying and failing to buy themselves taste, completely unaware that a gold toilet not only doesn’t earn you respect, but that people are openly laughing at you.

They have spent over 10 years disproving the mantra that you can buy success; the net spend table over the last five years is proof of that. While largely true, United are here to prove that it’s harder than that. The football has to come first, not the rice noodle partner contracts, but who can say that has been the case? The rotting stadium itself is a physical manifestation of the state of the club and it will take a long time and substantial further investment to bring it up to standard. It illustrates how disrespected the fans have been and how taken for granted, even as their environment is falling apart. They stand guilty of quite literally failing to fix the roof when the sun is shining.

Rarely has a club needed to get relegated in order to reboot itself and come back leaner and meaner because they look like a fat, lazy, bloated corpse of a club right now. The team is everything that’s wrong with modern football; an embodiment of entitlement.

For so long they’ve been obsessed with being ‘elite’ while they played leaden, unfocused style-free football. Buying who they think are ‘elite’ players and managers, with almost zero return for their multi-million pound investment, making players and managers worse than they have been elsewhere in the process, seemingly no humiliation embarrassing enough for them to realise that they’ve been pursuing the entirely wrong policy for many years and are clueless and more useless than is typical. The problem has usually not wholly been the manager’s fault.

Endlessly trying to buy in the finished article rather than develop something is the rich shitkicker’s attitude. All surface and no roots. Looking to build a big castle on the finest sand with a team that is self-evidently not very good. If they were, they’ve had plenty of time to show it. They are not in a false position. 12th is as 12th does. Only three clubs have scored less. The team is stuffed with entitled half-assed players who are clearly not good enough but are paid like world-beaters and in front of goal they’re showing relegation form. Dreadful. Clueless.

This is what happens when you’re driven by image, status and assumption and not by informative data and intelligence. Get with the programme daddio. At times it has seemed like they’ve been running parts of the club like it’s still 1991.The new system won’t fix that.

This might not be a new start, it might be more of the same. Without profound change behind the scenes and a complete revolution in how they do business as well as how they play, success on the pitch seems unlikely to be long term or profound and their sparkling new manager could, like many before him, find himself running up against the same old problems. Then what?

They’ve got a large mountain to climb to get back into the top four, made all the tougher by their self-image as a big club, which impacts on the manager if results don’t suddenly become consistently stellar. Financially and culturally they are, but sportingly they are nothing more than mid-table mediocrity and the club, its hierarchy, fans and players, would do well to realise it.

The first step to redemption is to recognise your sins. That should keep Ruben Amorim busy for a while because right now, they’re not anywhere near good enough.

New Man Utd boss Ruben Amorim has singled out Joshua Zirkzee and Jonny Evans for criticism during their 1-1 draw against Ipswich Town on Sunday.

The Red Devils took a very early lead inside two minutes through Marcus Rashford – who scored only his second goal of the season in the Premier League – before Omari Hutchinson equalised just before half-time through a deflected long-range effort.

The point took Amorim’s side up one place in the Premier League table to 12th with Andre Onana producing a couple of brilliant saves to deny Ipswich more goals.

Zirkzee, Luke Shaw, Manuel Ugarte, Rasmus Hojlund and Mason Mount all climbed off the bench in the second half as Man Utd pushed for a winning goal.

Netherlands international Zirkzee – who played as a number ten behind Hojlund when he came on in the 68th minute – has been told by Amorim he’s got to be better at getting into the box during Man Utd attacks.

Amorim told Sky Sports: “I think that [decision-making] is a concern, you don’t need to coach them at this level.

“You have to keep the ball and know the momentum to put the ball in front. Sometimes you feel that you can’t keep the ball and you [have to] put the ball in front.

“Then you have like we are in the end of the game, we were around the box with two strikers. Josh [Zirkzee] has to understand that he has to go to the box to have the crosses.

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“So we are doing some things that were not at the right moment, so that is something we have to address.

“Sometimes people talk about the 3-4-3, that is not the concern, the system is the system but the understanding of the game is what we have to improve a lot in this area.”

New Man Utd boss Amorim also insisted that Evans should have been getting tighter to Hutchinson with the Ipswich winger allowed too much space.

Amorim added: “If you see the first half, we were a little bit afraid. The No.5 [Sam Morsy] was always alone, we have to jump on him.

“Hutchinson was always in the dead space, Jonny Evans should be pressing his guy, but when we don’t have the training and it’s hard to see say all the reactions to the players.

“We had two days, they are confused a little bit. If you stay here, you don’t run, you defend but you don’t run. You feel that in the data, but we have to understand the data to understand what happened in the game, then we have to be so much better physically to cope with the high pressure, the volume of the high-speed running, we need time to work on these things.”

According to reports, new Manchester United head coach Ruben Amorim has ‘given the green light’ for the Premier League giants to sign Angel Gomes.

Amorim has been appointed to replace Erik ten Hag at Man Utd and his first game in charge was against Ipswich Town on Sunday afternoon.

The Red Devils made the perfect start to this game as Marcus Rashford got on the end of a cross from Amad Diallo to break the deadline inside the opening couple of minutes.

United were unable to kick on, though. Ipswich Town responded well to going behind and Omari Hutchinson netted a deserved equaliser for the hosts just before the interval.

Ipswich arguably had the better chances and were certainly worthy of a point. Following this result, Man Utd are 12th in the Premier League and six points adrift of the Champions League places.

READ: Good luck Ruben Amorim; Man Utd are ‘a fat, lazy, bloated corpse of a club’

Amorim will likely be keen to add to his squad in January, but recent reports have claimed he is going to have a ‘tight budget’ in the winter window.

Man Utd are expected to be more active in the summer and Gomes is one of the players they are being linked with.

The 24-year-old progressed through the ranks at Old Trafford and left in 2021 after struggling to establish himself as a regular at his boyhood club.

His decision to leave has worked out nicely as he’s shone for Ligue Un side Lille in recent seasons. His form for the French outfit earned him a spot in the England squad under interim boss Lee Carsley.

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Gomes’ long-term future is in doubt as he has entered the final year of his contract and he is being linked with several Premier League clubs.

Man Utd are reportedly interested in re-signing the centre-midfielder and a report from Caught Offside claims Amorim has ‘given the green light’ for this ‘return transfer’.

‘The England international has impressed a great deal since leaving Man Utd as a youngster, and it seems his performances in Ligue 1 have convinced new Red Devils boss Amorim that he could be a useful asset for his squad.

‘Sources with a close understanding of the situation have informed CaughtOffside that United are not alone in their pursuit of Gomes, however, with a host of top Premier League clubs also keen on landing the 24-year-old.

‘Arsenal and Chelsea have also been monitoring Gomes, while it’s also felt that the likes of Manchester City, Liverpool, Tottenham and Newcastle could also get involved if he becomes available, as well as European giants Atletico Madrid and Napoli.

‘However, CaughtOffside understands that Gomes himself would favour a move back to Old Trafford if possible, with the player seeking a three-year contract plus the option of a further year on top of that.’

Owen Hargreaves insists new Man Utd boss Ruben Amorim was “really, really frustrated with a lot of things” and in particular four players against Ipswich Town.

The Red Devils drew 1-1 against the Tractor Boys on Saturday in the Portuguese coach’s first match in charge of Man Utd.

Marcus Rashford opened the scoring with a close-range finish inside two minutes at Portman Road before Omari Hutchinson equalised with a deflected strike from outside the box before half-time.

Andre Onana pulled off a couple of good saves during the match to help Man Utd pick up their first point under former Sporting Lisbon boss Amorim.

But former Man Utd midfielder Hargreaves insists Amorim was “really frustrated” by Rashford, Diogo Dalot, Rasmus Hojlund and Joshua Zirkzee during the match,

Hargreaves, who was watching the match against Ipswich from near the technical area, said: “He [Amorim] was very frustrated, I’m not going to lie. He was right in front of me and he was really, really frustrated with a lot of things.

“I think Dalot’s positioning frustrated him a little bit in the first half. I think he didn’t really like the balance of the midfield, and when Zirkzee came on I don’t think he was very happy with his positioning and Hojlund’s positioning. So there’s a lot of things that need a little bit of work.”

As well as Dalot and Hojlund’s positioning during the match, Hargreaves revealed that the new Man Utd boss was also “frustrated” with Rashford and Zirkzee.

MORE MAN UTD COVERAGE ON F365…
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👉 Mailbox: Ruben Amorim at Man Utd: ‘New Manager Thud anyone?’
👉 Good luck Ruben Amorim; Man Utd are ‘a fat, lazy, bloated corpse of a club’

Hargreaves added: “I don’t think Marcus knew at times where he needed to be when the ball was in certain areas and Ruben was quite frustrated with that.

“When Zirkzee came on I don’t think [Amorim] was overly happy with his positioning. Zirkzee played as a No.10 and I don’t think that suited him.”

On his own thoughts on Amorim’s first match in charge, Hargreaves continued: “If you think you’re going to play with Eriksen and Casemiro as a midfield two in the Premier League you’re going to struggle. I thought Omari [Hutchinson] on that half turn had the beating of them every time.

“Once he got it out of his feet, with that close control and that low centre of gravity, I thought Eriksen and Casemiro were always going to struggle, I just thought in a way it was made for Ugarte.

“I was really surprised Kobbie Mainoo didn’t come off the bench with the changes they made. Bruno Fernandes dropping deeper and Marcus coming off. I think it’s going to take a bit of time to find what his best team is going to be.”