Chelsea ready to go with £35m for Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain — report

Chelsea and £35m bids go together like like rama lama kama ka dinga da dinga dong; a wop baba lumop a wap bam boom.

Or something.

(I swear I’m not that old, but that reference is to this song.)

Here, the Mirror’s tweet has a much more recent pop culture reference:

“This Arsenal midfielder” is of course Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, who’s been one of the handful of names linked fairly often with Chelsea over the last couple weeks.

Initial rumors put his price at £25m, but that seemed far too low, even with just one year left on his contract (which apparently Arsenal are more than happy to run down because silly reasons). A few days ago, Chelsea’s interest was supposedly set to intensify, so now here’s the Mirror to reveal the magnitude of our intensification, £35m. Decent.

Is £35m going to impress Arsenal? That’s a bit more doubtful, plus it’s just the Mirror so this could be just a bunch of smoke with no real fire behind it. But the Ox is supposedly on Conte’s shortlist, and he’s a player who would make a ton of sense as a much-needed addition to the squad.