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Hot football transfer gossip: Stones, De Bruyne, Berahino, Neymar all increase in value

Buying a Premier League player this summer is a bit like trying to buy a house: it takes months to complete a deal, you can only do it if you’ve got loads of money and there’s a permanent risk of being gazumped by a cash-rich Russian - just ask Ed Woodward. But the most pertinent similarity, judging by recent transfer events, is that it’s very much a seller’s market out there.

Hence, players who appear to have astronomically high price tags end up costing even more than their already exorbitant listed value. Take John Stones, for example, for whom £30m was initially considered an extremely high amount to pay. Now it seems Chelsea would bite Everton’s hands off for that bargain, because the Merseysiders have hiked up the price to £45m, claims today’s Sun.

Manchester City’s pursuit of Kevin de Bruyne is proving similarly costly, with it now appearing clear - even fancy papers like the Guardian say so - that the club have agreed a £54m deal with Wolfsburg for the Belgian, making him the most expensive ginger footballer of all time. Maybe the most expensive ginger person of all time full stop. But only weeks ago, City were apparently refusing to meet an asking price of a mere £50m.

Tottenham chairman Daniel Levy is a man who knows how to take advantage of a seller’s market better than anyone, but the boot’s on the other foot in this window. Spurs are reluctant to increase their £21m bid for Saido Berahino, according to Sky Sports, with West Brom hopeful of receiving £30m for a player widely reportedly last week to have been valued at £25m.

And it’s not just the star players who are rocketing up in price - even Jonny Evans is getting a piece of the action. Manchester United are demanding £12m for the defender, claims the Daily Star, with Everton and West Brom - two sides who may receive rather large windfalls soon - the sides that reportedly want to buy him.

It’s possibly the shock of Evans’s valuation, rather than the others, that has prompted Barcelona to quickly set about increasing Neymar’s buyout clause from a measly £140m to a more realistic £182m - a process the Daily Mail says is getting under way.

At the other end of the scale, West Ham may miss out on the apparent bargain of the summer - Alex Song on a free transfer - because Juventus have joined the bidding for the Barcelona midfielder, according to the Sun. There is a slight catch with that deal, in that Song is injured with no return date in sight and earns very high wages. In a seller’s market, there’s no such thing as a free footballer.

@darlingkevin