Yahoo Sport 
Hot Football Transfer Gossip: Chelsea 'fail with £62.5m Dembele, Candreva bids' amid suspicion that papers were making everything up
Well that was, err, good? If you like spending five entire months saying how Manchester United, Manchester City, Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool and Tottenham – the Premier League’s moneybags top six – are going to splash out millions on every Tom, Dick and Fabinho under the sun, only for them to sign one player between them in the entire transfer window – a £40,000 Hednesford Town left-back who had just been made redundant at a car factory. You couldn’t make it up (although it appears the papers have been making it all up).
So today Hot Football Transfer Gossip is reduced to informing you not of the gossip that will happen, but of the gossip that didn’t happen but reportedly could have done.
We’re led to believe that Chelsea, for example, really did try to do some hot transfer action yesterday, but no one else wanted to play with them.
[JANUARY TRANSFER WINDOW – YAHOO SPORT’S FINAL WRAP]
The Mail says it thinks Antonio Conte probably made a £35m offer for Celtic striker Moussa Dembele, which was rejected, while the Express alleges that the Blues saw a £27.5m bid for Inter Milan midfielder Antonio Candreva turned down.
The same paper says Chelsea accepted a £18m bid from Bournemouth for Nathan Ake, but he decided to stay at Stamford Bridge. Conte was also prepared to let goalkeeper Asmir Begovic move to the Cherries but was forced to pull the plug on a £10m deal because he failed to lure his preferred replacement, Craig Gordon, south from Celtic (Mirror).
Hull City ended up doing more business than most, but their attempt to top it off with the capture of Valencia’s Euro 2016-winning, former Manchester United star Nani failed to come off (Mail), despite David Meyler sending the winger a cheeky tweet telling him not to be late for Tigers training. Lolz etc.
Elsewhere, Everton boss Ronald Koeman refused to let James McCarthy make a £15m move to Newcastle (Mirror), West Ham, Leicester and Stoke all failed with attempts to snap up Ludogorets winger Jonathan Cafu (Star) and Tottenham weren’t even prepared to let Vincent Janssen go – turning down a late loan offer from Galatasaray for the misfiring striker (ESPN).
Things got so bad that Chinese Super League sides couldn’t even buy players from Scunthorpe, with Henan Jianye’s £4m bid for Kevin van Veen flatly rejected by the Iron, who demanded £8m for the Dutch striker (Sky Sports).
So all in all, the January transfer window was a bit of a damp squib to say the least. Tell you what though, with this lack of winter activity, just imagine how many thousands of millions the top teams are going to spend in the summer transfer window! SMILEY FACE SMILEY FACE SMILEY FACE
