Give us your Erling Haaland to Chelsea rumor clicks!

Nothing of note has happened in the winter market so far, and with just a few days left in the January transfer window, it doesn’t look like much at all is going to happen — and not just at Chelsea, but around the football world. It’s a pandemic (still), y’all!

And so, the rumor mill’s left to speculate about future transfers, while passing off conjectures and opinions as news. Gotta fill that airtime with something, right Sky Sports, and make sure viewers still tune in on Yellow Tie Day to watch what is sure to be a whole lot of nothing happening on Deadline Day. Chelsea can’t sack a coach every day! (Well, we “can”, but not even Roman’s that bored!)

So, here’s Sky talking head Kaveh Solkehol with the breathless ... “news” ... of Chelsea maybe perhaps potentially making a possible play if all the things that need to align, align, and so on and so forth. We should be quite familiar with how things go in the rumor mill by now. Nothing is said, but everything is said.

That is to say, welcome to Stamford Bridge, Erling Braut Haaland! Got a shirt number picked out yet?

“Because of the pandemic, most clubs will not have money to spend in the summer, but of course we saw last summer that as far as Chelsea are concerned, they view that as an opportunity.

“Roman Abramovich is one of the richest men in the world, so Chelsea have the money to do the deal in the summer if they can convince Dortmund to sell and convince Haaland to come to Stamford Bridge.”

-Kaveh Solkehol; source: Sky via Football.London

To be fair to ol’e Kaveh, he isn’t necessarily pulling this out of thin air. He’s just late to the “news” as Sky so often are, before passing it off as “BREAKING”.

Photo by RONNY HARTMANN/POOL/AFP via Getty Images

A couple weeks ago, The Athletic already fired this very shot in this transfer rumor clicks-war — super-agent Mino Raiola of course providing the gunpowder — claiming that the 20-year-old is Chelsea’s marquee target and we’re even willing to break the club’s transfer record. Haaland’s apparently that good, wouldn’t you know — and if you don’t, you’re probably the last person among those who pay even a modicum of attention to European football.

After that opening salvo, Borussia Dortmund responded with the classic chess move of mixing metaphors being understandably reluctant to deal, and wanting to keep the big kid for at least another season, even if after that his reported €75m release clause would kick in. And that’s often code for wanting an exorbitant fee, which Chelsea maybe of course could possibly provide maybe. (Or some other team, say, Real Madrid? So many ways to spin this into so many sweet clicks!)

Fortunately, you clicked on this and made another drop of that sweet heavenly mana drip onto the SB Nation servers, keeping these proverbial lights on. All y’all the real heroes.

(Sky also regurgitate Chelsea’s debunked interest in Bayern Munich’s David Alaba, who was said to have reached an agreement with Real Madrid last week, but until the ink is dry, it’s all just fake news.)