With claims that Jesse Lingard has taken on Mino Raiola to represent him, transfer rumours were never going to be far away.

The agent hasn’t exactly been glowing about Manchester United recently, so Lingard making the decision to take him on could be a transfer signal in itself.

Given Raiola’s Serie A connections, links to clubs there were inevitable, and the first up seems to be AC Milan.

The claims come from Alessandro Jacobone, who works for Sport Italia and runs a radio programme on Milan. He reiterates that Lingard has moved to the Raiola stable, and says the United player has been offered to the Rossoneri ‘in recent hours’.

As Jacobone, who has a checkable history of reporting on AC Milan, has it, Lingard is ‘leaving’ Manchester United, so it would just be a question of where he ends up.

There are no other Italian claims on this story right now.

Given how the rumour mill works, this story is likely to travel, so don’t be surprised if by the end of the week there are reports of a possible swap deal involving Krzysztof Piatek, who Milan could sell this month.