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There's little more than a week to go until the end of the transfer deadline, and that means we're going to start seeing increasingly outlandish rumours floating around. Naturally, we'd prefer they be ignored entirely, but people are going to talk about them no matter what, so we might as well have our say.
Today, the intertubes have two juicy Chelsea rumours for us. The first is that the Blues have rejected a £30M approach from Manchester City for Brazilian centre half David Luiz, who missed Wednesday's match against Reading with a minor knee injury. Secondly, we have the news that Daniel Sturridge remains a target of Liverpool.
What do these rumours have in common? They're taking a polarising Chelsea player and linking them with a transfer elsewhere. We all know that both Sturridge and David Luiz take a lot of criticism for their styles of play, and that many Blues fans would like to see them moved on. That makes them great fodder for transfer rumours*, because talking about them leaving will generate plenty of hits.
*Especially David Luiz, because you can generate a emotional reaction from his diehard fans and the folks who think he's worthless.
They're also similar in that they're talking about Chelsea losing players from positions where they have absolutely no depth. Chelsea have four senior centre backs. One of them plays right back and has a habit of getting himself sent off from. One of them is injury prone and looking at a potential ban from the FA. There's basically no cover in the centre of defence -- we don't even have Jose Bosingwa to put there anymore.
At centre forward, we're incredibly thin. Now that Romelu Lukaku's headed out on loan, after Fernando Torres and Sturridge, there is basically nobody. On the summer tour, we ended up playing 18-year-old Lucas Piazon out of position at centre forward. That should be a pretty big indicator that our depth there is most accurately described as 'lolsy'.
So why are we getting rumours about losing either Sturridge or David Luiz? Because we'll read them. Seriously, unless we get major, unexpected reinforcements at either centre forward or the defence, neither player is going anywhere.
