Carvalho to United a "done deal", again

It's not just Toni Kroos rumours we're reheating today, oh no. Sporting Lisbon's young moustachioed midfield prospect William Carvalho is back on the radar as well. Good times. According to Talksport:

United have already agreed a fee of around £35million with Sporting Lisbon and finalised terms with the midfielder on a five-year contract, although the deal will not be made official until the transfer window opens. The signing of Carvalho, who is set to feature for Portugal in this summer's World Cup, will be seen as a major coup for under pressure Red Devils boss Moyes. United have been monitoring the 22-year-old all season and beaten off competition from Real Madrid, Inter Milan, Liverpool and Monaco, who have strong links to his agent Jorge Mendes.

Talksport are trailing this as their exclusive, a bit optimistically, since the same story appears apparently independently in the Manchester Evening News. They cite "sources in Portugal". Not only that, but more-or-less precisely the same story ran in the Sunday People a few weeks back, as covered in your super soaraway TBB.

Whether Bill Carvalho — it'll definitely catch on — is worth that sort of money is beyond your correspondent's ken. The lovely people over at In Bed With Maradona, however, judge him to be one of the 100 best young players in the world, and Portuguese football blogger Tom Kundert, writing for FourFourTwo, also thinks very highly of him. "He executes the holding midfielder's role with a mastery that belies his 21 years," apparently. Doesn't that sound exciting?