It must be a slow news day on the Sunday Mirror football desk, what with international week increasing the demand for stories. John Richardson has put his name to a piece – already available online – claiming that Chelsea are close to a £30m swoop for Fulham’s teenage midfielder Luke Harris.

There are just a couple of problems with this idea. The first is that Richardson’s insight is undermined by the fact that the story claims that Harris has not made a first-team appearance for the Whites. Anyone who was at Crawley Town for Fulham’s ignominious League Cup exit last month probably won’t forget it – and not because the seventeen year-old starlet, stuck out on the left wing and starved of service, was mesmerising. You’d think they’d check this stuff before sending it to print.

The second – rather more important – issue is the fact that Harris signed a professional deal with Fulham only a fortnight ago. He’s under contract at Craven Cottage for three years and rebuffed the advances of a number of English and European clubs, including Chelsea, to commit his future to Fulham, who brought him from Jersey after Harris was spotted by Malcolm Elias in a youth tournament on the island. The Blues are known to admire Harris – currently away with the Welsh senior side after getting a first call-up from Rob Page – particularly after his brilliant hat-trick blew them away in August’s SW6 derby, but they will join a long queue of suitors.

Harris is believed to be very happy at Fulham and relishing the opportunity to train every day with the first team under the watchful eye of Marco Silva, who has included him in several Premier League match day squads this season. It is just a matter of time before the talented teenager, who has scored an incredible 32 goals in 53 academy appearances since first playing for the under 18s at the age of 15, makes his first league appearance for the Whites. Silva and the Fulham hierarchy are determined to provide a proper pathway for the club’s category one academy talent and that doesn’t mean accepting audacious bids from their sanctioned local rivals.