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Hot Football Transfer Gossip: Barcelona ‘target Dirk Kuyt’

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Um. Is the only real way to begin a transfer gossip column where the most eye-catching story of the day is that Barcelona are being linked with a move for Dirk Kuyt. And the twist isn’t that it’s someone else called Dirk Kuyt - a hot teen sensation in Ajax’s youth system, or a Brazilian starlet with one of those funny names like Fred or Douglas. This is the ACTUAL Dirk Kuyt. The 35-year-old who left Liverpool three years ago because he wasn’t good enough for them then, and who some Reds fans thought was never good enough. The same Dirk Kuyt who scored five goals in 45 appearances in his final season at Anfield and who scored eight in the Turkish league in the last campaign. The lank-haired workhorse whose enduring quality was always his determination, never his Barcelona-esque skills. Him.


It’s all there in the black and white of the Metro, which reports that the Catalan giants are weighing up a move for Kuyt as they think he may be “the new Henrik Larsson”. Apart from the fact that Kuyt is a bit too old to be the new anything, he is also not very similar to the prolific Swede either in style or goalscoring prowess. But it could happen, and Hot Football Transfer Gossip sincerely hopes it does. Probably not as much as Dirk Kuyt, who is presumably carrying around a copy of Metro and showing it to everyone he meets this morning, asking them to read it back to him.

In less entertaining transfer news, especially for Arsenal fans, alleged Gunners target Mario Gotze has declared that he has no intention of leaving Bayern Munich, reports the Daily Star. The paper also claims that Arsene Wenger failed with a summer bid for Dynamo Moscow striker Aleksandr Kokorin due to a “lack of respect”. The Gunners reportedly wanted the 24-year-old on loan but Dynamo manager Andrey Kolebev said the player “deserves more than a loan”. What Kokorin himself thought about it, we don’t know, but he could be forgiven for having a few daydreams about cavorting around Piccadilly Circus when an icy chill takes a grip in Moscow this winter.

Tottenham fancy Gent’s 26-year-old forward Laurent Depoitre as an alternative to the no-longer-wantaway West Brom striker Saido Berahino, says Talksport.

And finally, Sadio Mane keeps being linked with Man Utd to the stage where it’s getting a bit boring, with the Metro the latest to claim the Southampton forward is a January target for Louis van Gaal.

@darlingkevin