Chelsea Ready to Bid £20M for David Luiz

According to the Daily Mail, Chelsea are putting in another bid for Benfica and Brazil left centre-back David Luiz. Last time the teams talked, Chelsea apparently offered £17M for the fuzzy-haired defensive maestro, but this time they're upping the ante, going with £20M and utlity player Paulo Ferreira.* We've written at length about Luiz in the past, but the long story is that although he's cup-tied in Europe he represents a significant boost in the team's defensive and a long-term replacement for John Terry, so we like the idea of picking him up a lot.

It's unclear whether an additional £3M and a fairly old but still useful backup in Ferreira would change Benfica's mind, but Luiz's valuation has been floating at around £23M, and a Ferreira/cash package should be in that neighbourhood. If I'm Chelsea, and Benfica say yes, I make the deal without blinking. Benfica, on the other hand, might be better off without Ferreira at all and pushing for an all-cash deal, since he probably costs a team more than he's worth.

This one does sound plausible though. Here's hoping there's some truth in the report.

*You could probably interpret the words in the Mail article to mean £20M including Ferreira, but the seems pretty silly to me, so I'm going a different route.