Sunderland man's encouraging social media post amid Newcastle United, Lazio and Crystal Palace transfer links

Sunderland fans were quick to pick up on Jobe Bellingham’s Instagram story in the aftermath of the game against Nottingham Forest on Friday

Lazio are said to be interested in signing the young midfielder with Crystal Palace and Newcastle United also thought to be keen this summer.

Lazio had been heavily linked with former Manchester United outcast Mason Greenwood before his eventual move to Ligue 1. Several Italian outlets, however, report that the Serie A club have turned their attention towards Jobe as an alternative.

The 18-year-old has interest from clubs in top tiers across Europe, with Crystal Palace making the strongest push for his signature so far this summer. Palace have a strong record of signing top talent from the EFL with the club tracking Jobe’s debut campaign closely.

Sunderland rejected initial moves from Palace this summer with Jobe under contract for another three years, meaning they were always fairly confident they could keep him in the current window. Seven days ago, transfer insider Fabrizio Romano reported the player himself had decided he is keen to stay for at least one more season.

Jobe, though, started for Régis Le Bris during Sunderland’s pre-season friendly against Nottingham Forest in Spain and shared an Instagram story from the clash picturing in front of Black Cats fans with heart emojis added alongside a laughing face, presumably aimed at the number of supporters with their shirts off in the Spanish heat.

Sporting director Kristjaan Speakman said earlier this month that he could not guarantee there would be no significant departures this summer but made clear that there was no need to sell any player.

While the market is volatile and things can change quickly, it looks for now highly likely that Bellingham will stay in an early boost to new head coach Régis Le Bris as he plans ahead for the new campaign despite the strong links to both Crystal Palace and Lazio

“I think it's really difficult to predict what will happen through the summer,” Speakman during a recent interview. “I think all I can say on the player retention piece is that we've had a really strong record on that.

Obviously, fantastic news with young Chris [Rigg] signing this week, I think that endorses and echoes everything we've been saying previously, we'll just take every piece of interest or every discussion that happens along the way for what it is at that point in time, which is really, really difficult to predict.

“I appreciate from a supporter's perspective, you want some certainty. I think the danger with the transfer window is it's always an uncertain period, but our intent and our objective has always been to retain our talent.

“As I've said before, I'd much rather get loads of interest on our talented players than be struggling to name talented players in our group,” he added. “So, I don't want to go into the individual ins and outs because those things always can chop and change. But as I said, I can reiterate our strategy and our intent is to retain our top talent.”