United to make January move for Atlético star

It's December. This means we're getting close to all manner of important dates: Hanukkah, Yalda, the winter solstice, Christmas, Kwanzaa, Hogmanay and that terrible, heartbreaking day when tBB looks at the festive television schedules to see if The Flame and the Arrow is on, and discovers it isn't. Another Christmas, ruined.

But all of the above pales in comparison to the most significant impending date: the opening of the January transfer window. Yes, there's just a month until all these swirling transfer rumours either (a) coalesce into something real and true and actual or (b) dissipate into nothingness. With that in mind, tBB is proud to present a genuinely quite exciting rumour: according to the Telegraph, Manchester United are sniffing around Atlético Madrid's Uruguayan central defender Diego Godín.

Godín  -- who, according to Wikipedia, is Atléti's "3rd captain", whatever that means -- is 28 years old (29 in February 2015), is Uruguayan, and is hard as nails . More importantly, he's pretty damn good indeed, and has a happy knack of scoring from important set pieces. The paper reckon that he's been identified by Van Gaal and his brain trusts as the ideal more experienced partner for Marcos Rojo, and that he has a release clause of €36m (£28.5m), which is less than most of the Mats Hummels rumours seem to think the German might cost.

Obviously, it's extremely unlikely that Atlético will want to part with one of their best players halfway through the season, so he won't be costing anything less than that. But if he's available, then the chance to pick up half of a defence that conceded only 29 goals on the way to the Spanish title last season, and only six on the way to the Champions League final, is not to be passed up. At the very least, he'd be a significant upgrade on United's current fistful of crocks and hopefuls.