Manchester United close to completion on £25m defender buy - full story

Aymeric Laporte is a wonderful young talent. The 20 year old Frenchman has made himself perhaps the most wanted of Club Athletic Blibao's current squad. Laporte has been repeatedly linked to Barcelona and at one stage (before his buyout clause started to rise) there were quite a few half concrete sounding Arsenal stories in Spain too, it would be no surprise to think he's an option seriously considered by both.

Laporte is a gem in a world short of truly talented central defenders, that he would be of interest to Manchester United would be no surprise either - indeed it's something ESPN's Miguel Delaney mentioned last week.

However, as is the case with rumours during a transfer window, things have been sent into the stratosphere. The Daily Star claimed on Sunday 'Man United to complete £25m deal for Chelsea and Arsenal target Aymeric Laporte', they don't claim this as their own story but say 'According to reports in Spain, a deal for the 20-year-old centre-back is "80 per cent done".'

That's a huge claim and would be a huge story in Spain if it had genuinely been reported and was seen as even remotely reliable, for several reasons. The Catalan press would devote pages to it, complaining that the transfer ban and previous bad spending had seen Barcelona miss out on a gem. The Madrid press would use it as a reason to big up their acquisition of Raphael Varane even more. And the Basque press? Well, they would be throwing toys everywhere out of the pram and rubbishing such claims. It's unthinkable, they'd say, that Laporte went to Manchester United so soon after Ander Herrera had done - and impossible that he'd do so for such a hefty discount on his buyout clause.

Laporte's clause is €42m, which converts to around £33m at today's rates. Any Manchester United supporters who remember Athletic's stubbornness over Herrera and subsequent strops, will know that the club is not likely to dish out such hefty discounts. Athletic have Laporte on a contract until June 2018 and they have no pressing reason to sell him, there's no reason for discounts - and there's nothing to back-up claims from The Daily Star that Manchester United are set to complete a deal.

The appreciation of Laporte may well be there at Manchester United, that would make absolute sense, but right now there doesn't seem much to suggest it's anything else.