Chelsea, Bayer Leverkusen now just €10m apart on Kai Havertz — report

Another breathless development in an otherwise standard negotiation process brings us news that Chelsea have upped our bid by €5m, to €85m, while Leverkusen have dropped their demands by €5m, to €95m.

Call me Nostradamus, but it sounds like a €90m agreement is in our near future!

Gory details aside, the deluge of updates over the past 24 hours surely indicates that the two teams are getting close to an actual transfer agreement. Whether that’ll be closer to the €100m Leverkusen initially wanted, or the (less than) €80m Chelsea wanted to spend is what’s at stake now, and all of these updates are just fumbling around in the dark with those figures anyway. Any final agreement will likely include a bunch of bonuses and add-ons and probably various installments as well, all of which are quite standard in any transfer, but especially one that is set to break national (most expensive German player ever) and club records (most expensive Chelsea signing ever).

Getting ever closer!