Chelsea raise Douglas Costa bid - report

Now that we've experience the hallucinatory non-vision that was Chelsea losing by two goals at home to Bradford City and getting knocked out of the FA Cup in the process -- an experience broadly shared by literally every half-decent team in the Premier League, for what it's worth -- it's time to get back to the January grind.

No, I don't mean the upcoming matches against Liverpool and Manchester City or anything boring like actual football. Nevermind the potentially season-defining games: it's transfer rumour time. Today (really yesterday, but we were all in mourning), we're back on the Douglas Costa trail.

You will, I assume, recall that we apparently had a £16 million bid rejected for the Brazilian earlier in the week -- now we've raised that by a whopping £2.7 million and are going back to Shakhtar hoping to secure the midfielder before the transfer window. That is, if you believe the Mail, who are suggesting we might pull in both Costa and Fiorentina's Juan Cuadrado to replace the potentially-outgoing Mohamed Salah and André Schürrle.

So, despite appearances at the beginning of the month, the final week of the January window might be interesting after all. Who'd have thought it.