The weekend's been pretty productive for the tabloids so far. Apart from that Javier Pastore to Chelsea this week rumour - which I actually think is at least somewhat legitimate overall, if not in the detail - we've got... well, other stuff. Less likely stuff. Or, at least, I think it's less likely - why don't you be the judge? (But only after I tell you I've judged them to be really stupid. Bias!)
The Daily Star thinks for some reason that we're now willing to offer Daniel Sturridge and £27M in cash for Luka Modric. Tottenham Hotspur would probably snap their hands off at that if they weren't in world's biggest pout mode, but considering the fact that Sturridge appears to be at the very least a competent bench striker on a very good team and not occupying a heavily contested position in terms of his homegrown roster spot... the only reason for Chelsea to have done this is if they've totally lost their minds. Considering that so far this summer they've acted in fairly a intelligent, restrained fashion, why would they wait until now to reveal that they're actually stark raving mad? They probably wouldn't.
Oh, and apparently the Mail thinks we're totally-super-definitely going after FC Porto midfielder Joao Moutinho, which as far as I can tell is based on a throwaway comment made by Porto president Pinto da Costa about Moutinho being more likely to move to Chelsea than Hulk this summer, which considering the midfielder's comments about wanting to stay at Porto is sort of like buying into the fact that you're going to win the lottery because you have a one in several million chance after buying a lottery ticket, which is higher than zero. That's a seriously strained simile. Sorry. Also, Moutinho is ridiculously expensive, carrying a €40M release clause. That's not a cost-effective buy, no matter how much Andre Villas-Boas might like him.
Anyway, obviously I don't think either of the above rumours will actually come about, mainly because they'd be way weirder than anything that's happened to this club so far in summer. Are we seriously expected to think that we'd go from spending €5M on Oriol Romeu and €9M on Thibuat Courtois, two signings designed to make us competitive in the future without spending a tonne of money, are we really expected to believe we'd punt Danny Sturridge and drop £30M on top of that to acquire Modric? All seems rather silly to me...
But I'm just a blogger, not a Sports Journalist (TM). What do I know?