Chelsea ‘confident’ of being ‘on the verge of’ signing Édouard Mendy — report

Chelsea should have our new goalkeeper “within days or the next few weeks” — well, which one is it, days or weeks? — according to The Athletic and their supposed “no gossip or rumours”-just-facts transfer ... uh rumor ... tracker.

Simon Johnson’s report doesn’t guess the price point at which this deal might occur. It claims that a £14m opening bid has been rejected (this was reported as €16m before by the Guardian), but despite that Chelsea are “increasingly confident” that we are “on the verge of agreeing a deal”, which will take our total summer spending “closer to the £250m mark”.

That leaves plenty of room for a big fee since we only just breached the £200m mark with the reduced fee for Kai Havertz. And we might need most of that room since Rennes were asking upwards of €40m for the 28-year-old goalkeeper at last check.

The report assures that “negotiations between the two clubs are ongoing and an agreement should be reached”. If we can get that done at the lower end of the reported fees, that’d be good.