Chelsea to revive controversial transfer pursuit, ready to overspend on Everton duo — reports

One can only hope this is just tabloids and newspapers gone mad.  Although when they're all basically reporting the same thing — from the Star to the Guardian — there's a good chance they were briefed by the same, singular, probably club-related source.

Chelsea will revive their pursuit of Everton's John Stones this summer despite a recent slump in the England centre-half's form...

-source: Guardian

Chelsea will renew their attempt to sign John Stones this summer, raising the prospect of a bidding war for the Everton defender who is also attracting strong interest from Manchester City.

-source: Times

Chelsea remain very interested in signing John Stones and will make a fresh attempt to land him from Everton this summer, while a possible bid to bring Romelu Lukaku back to Stamford Bridge is being actively considered...

-source: ESPN

And so on and so forth.

Last summer, £37m wasn't enough to get Everton to sell John Stones even though the "next John Terry" had even submitted a transfer request.  Meanwhile, Romelu Lukaku's rumoured price is upwards of £50m, maybe even closer to £65m.  You do the math.

With the new owners at Everton no doubt wanting to improve on this season's poor league performance, getting them to sell two of the team's biggest stars will not be an easy task.  Then again, improving a Chelsea squad without the prospect of Champions League football will likely require the club to overspend regardless of who we go after.

We may not need a literal overhaul of the squad, but a few key, surgical signings will be required.  Could this young Everton duo of Stones and Lukaku be just the ticket?  (I wouldn't mind Lukaku at something reasonable, in all honesty, but Stones is overpriced at £20m, let alone £40m.)