Chelsea linked with Arturo Vidal, Ricardo Rodriguez, and world record Van Dijk bid

Quietly amidst the fireworks shows around the world ringing in the new year, the January transfer window pushed open its doors and flipped the closed sign over to open. And once everyone got over their champagne hangovers, the wheels of the rumor mill started churning in earnest, too. A certain Emanuele Giulianelli has been especially busy, and that’s unfortunate because his nonsense has gotten plenty of Chelsea fans rather excited about things that are highly unlikely to ever come true.

You might remember Guilianelli from last summer as the architect of the Eden Hazard-to-Manchester United for £75m story (because Eden just adores Mourinho so much it hurts). Given the success of that Tancredi-esque bombshell — BOOM — Giulianelli has recently linked Chelsea with both Arturo Vidal and Wolfsburg’s Ricardo Rodriguez.

Even if Giulianelli’s onto something — and RicRod (only £21m?) has certainly been linked with Chelsea many times before in recent years — his hilariously bad Hazard story has me looking at all this rather skeptically, to put it kindly.

But there you go, Vidal & Rodriguez. Midfield and left back, just what the doctor ordered.

And if that’s not enough, here’s the Express for ya with Chelsea bidding some ridiculously unreasonable amount for Virgil van Dijk. Let’s have a laugh, shall we.

The £60m would be a world record for a defender and while Chelsea have plenty to spend after Oscar’s transfer to Shanghai SIPG, surely, we can make a better deal than this one.

And so Silly Season rolls on. Brace yourselves.