Transfer gossip: Chelsea surprisingly pretty keen to sign Bellingham and Rice

Chelsea would very much like to sign Jude Bellingham and/or Declan Rice. But probably won’t. Doesn’t mean they won’t try, though, the money-spaffing scamps!

Three things are true. One, Chelsea’s current policy is to buy all of the footballers. Two, . Three, the world’s most in-demand midfielder Jude Bellingham plays for Borussia Dortmund.

Mix those three things together and you get this inevitable headline in the Daily Telegraph: “Chelsea want Jude Bellingham despite £600m transfer spend”.

That’s an interesting “despite” really, because if anything the fact Chelsea are just throwing all the money at every high-profile footballer they see is the main reason this far-fetched story is any kind of a goer. It’s “because of” if anything.

It’s also one of our very favourite kind of transfer stories, because even the writer doesn’t have any confidence in it. Like Matt Law, we don’t doubt Chelsea would very much like to sign Jude Bellingham. He’s a sensationally good, if wildly expensive, footballer and that is very on brand for Todd Boehly’s Soccer Project.

But the chances of it happening are surely slim to nil, and thus the story follows the classic blueprint of starting off bullish and getting cagier and less sure the further you read until eventually you realise it is pure tish and fipsy and you also probably shouldn’t lead a transfer gossip column on it. Too late now, though. Too late now.

By the time we get to the intro we’re already heavily couched. “Chelsea have not been put off…” is how it begins, and within two pars “there is a recognition within Chelsea that they are not among the favourites to sign Bellingham.” You don’t say. And also “missing out on qualification for the Champions League would make their task even harder.” They are pretty much definitely going to miss out on Champions League qualification, so.

Still, though, it’s a fun line on the day he faces the club and the great thing about Chelsea and their current spending plan is that this kind of story can be written about literally any player. You’d better believe they’ll try and sign Bellingham. You’d better believe they’ll do “everything in their power” and “move heaven and earth” to “sell the project” to “the player and his advisers”. And you’d better believe that “Liverpool, Madrid and City all thought to be better placed to sign the 19-year-old.”

Ah well. A more plausible footnote to this tall tale is that Declan Rice is likely heading to Arsenal. Although Chelsea will certainly try to sign him too!

There’s also some guff in the Express about how Rice would only join Chelsea to play with his best pal Mason Mount, so Chelsea need to sort out Mount’s contract if they want to sign Rice. It’s too playground for words, and we’ve already wasted enough of them on that. Chelsea should sort Mason Mount’s contract out so they don’t lose Mason Mount.

Jude Bellingham and Declan Rice are likely to dominate the summer transfer chatter but there’s going to be plenty of James Maddison noise too with Newcastle and Tottenham both keen. The Telegraph, though, reckon Leicester haven’t entirely given up hope of convincing their star playmaker to sign a new deal as he enters the final 18 months of his current one.

We also enjoyed the phrasing of Leicester “facing up to the prospect of losing three stars for nothing in June”. We’re pretty sure they’ve long since faced up to the prospect, and we’ll give you Youri Tielemans as a star. How much sleep is being lost at Leicester over the expiring contracts of Caglar Soyuncu and Ayoze Perez is, however, less clear.

Anyway, Arsenal and Manchester United remain keen on Tielemans, who we still can’t quite believe wasn’t snagged by someone for a small fee last summer but there you go.