Transfer round-up: Roma raise bid for Leicester’s Riyad Mahrez to £31.5m

Roma have submitted a new bid worth €35m (£31.5m) for Leicester’s Riyad Mahrez, with the Premier League side expected to reject the latest approach for the 2015-16 PFA player of the season.

The Algerian has been the subject of several approaches by the Serie A side, who has been identified by the new coach, Eusebio Di Francesco, as his No1 transfer target. However, despite Mahrez’s public declaration that he wants to leave the King Power Stadium this summer, Leicester remain determined not to allow him to leave for less than their valuation of around £40m.

Arsenal have also been linked with a move for the 26-year-old, with Craig Shakespeare admitting earlier this week that Mahrez would prefer to remain in the Premier League.

“He wants to play for a top-six club. If we don’t get an offer from a top-six club, he stays. If that offer comes in and it’s not enough, he stays,” he said. “It is quite clear for me at the moment, he has made that statement and he is our player.”

Josh Onomah has completed a season-long loan from Tottenham Hotspur to Aston Villa. The 20-year-old midfielder, who starred in England’s triumphant Under-20 World Cup campaign earlier in the summer, has reached a stage where he needs to play regular first-team football.

Mauricio Pochettino rates Onomah, who has trained with the Tottenham squad for the past three years but not done enough to guarantee the player would get the minutes he needs this season. Usually the manager prefers to keep his brightest young players with him, trusting himself and his coaches to bring them on and drill into them the way that he wants to play.

Onomah, however, has reached a crossroads. After three years he knows what Pochettino wants from him and now he has to go and show it. Pochettino is aware that at Villa – one of the biggest clubs in the Championship – Onomah will be exposed to high levels of competition and pressure, while he will play alongside seasoned professionals. He has extended his contract at Tottenham until 2021.

There has been a question mark over Onomah’s best position. Pochettino has seen him as an attacking midfielder, who can play anywhere in the line of three behind the striker, but Onomah shone at the Under-20 World Cup in a box-to-box role, with a deeper starting position. Steve Bruce, the Villa manager, has moved for him after losing Jack Grealish for at least three months to a freak kidney injury.

Pochettino is close to a permanent transfer for the Southampton reserve goalkeeper Paulo Gazzaniga, whom he worked with previously when he was the manager at St Mary’s. The 25-year-old Argentinian spent last season on loan at Rayo Vallecano in the Spanish second division. The move follows Tottenham’s failure to agree a permanent deal for Pau López, who spent last season on loan at White Hart Lane from Espanyol.

Meanwhile Gastón Ramírez has left Middlesbrough to join Sampdoria for a reported €11m. The Uruguay international joined Southampton in 2012 from Bologna and had spells on loan at Hull and Boro before moving to the Riverside on a permanent deal last summer.