No Chelsea bid for Paulo Dybala or Dušan Vlahović — reports

As things stand, Chelsea are set to head into the new season with new arrivals Christopher Nkunku and Nicolas Jackson joining Armando Broja and his new ACL as our main options at center forward. Assuming Romelu Lukaku and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang transfer out, and David Datro Fofana leaves on loan, that’s not necessarily good enough ... at least as far as the rumor mill’s concerned, which has been turning up the volume on the Paulo Dybala and Dušan Vlahović tracks in the last few days.

Dybala’s got a quite reasonable buyout in his AS Roma contract (just €12m for teams outside the Serie A) and Vlahović has been on the market for a while, with PSG possibly ready to plunk down some cash, but any links with Chelsea are purely speculation at this point.

Dybala himself has confirmed that he’s staying with Roma, while Juventus are just trying to milk as much out of Vlahović as possible after an underwhelming 14-goal season (42 appearances in all competitions) from the €70m-man. Thankfully, it sounds like Chelsea are in danger of getting sucked into that silly game, despite the rumors.

At 23, Vlahović might fit better our rebuilding ideals, but certainly not at that price. Dybala might be a decent bargain, but his prospects were a lot more attractive in 2015, when he first appeared on our radar, as opposed to now, at 29 going on 30.

Anyway, nearly two more months of this sort of silliness to go.