No breakthrough yet for Chelsea in Enzo Fernández talks — report

A new dawn breaks, and it’s the last new dawn of the 2023 January transfer window. By this time tomorrow, all the ink will have dried, all the dust will have settled. How different will our world look by then? Who knows.

All eyes right now are trained on Lisbon, Portugal, where Chelsea’s Impossible Transfer-Mission Force (IMTF) are plotting one final move. They’ve been up all night, studying Benfica’s defenses for any sort of weakness. Can they be defeated without resorting to a weapon of balance sheet destruction, i.e. the €120m release clause?

So far, the answer has been a fairly resounding no, and that remains the case despite Chelsea supposedly “very confident” about eventually getting a different answer. But time unfortunately isn’t limitless, and we have about 16 hours to un-swallow sadness and send some faxes.

Let’s hope Fabrizio Romano’s computers don’t drain the entire European power grid.