roman-abramovich-avram-grant.jpg

Avram must have started the countdown for the winter transfers a few months back. I don’t think Chelsea needs all four weeks of the winter transfer window. Given our preparedness and ACN absences, Grant might want to get the signings done pretty soon. He should have all the support from Roman because that’s what I’d understand from the £50 million plus transfer funds made available for Grant for the January transfer window.

Chelsea are still chasing Luka Modric, the No.10 of Dinamo Zagreb, a classic playmaker as they call him. We have competition from Spurs and Man City but we are the front runners as Dinamo seems to expect £20 million. This is not an expensive transfer by the 2004 Chelsea prices but things have changed now. I have not see Luka Modric in action much. He has attracted a lot of attention so he must be quite decent. Just check this youtube video. Don’t undermine the youtube assessments. Remember, Man City is flying high!

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1DLpUeiZBA[/video]

Nicholas Anelka is still being discussed amidst reported feelings from Anelka that he wants to play an important role in Chelsea and not just as a stop gap for Drogba. Fair enough but that should be determined by various factors. The best striker in Europe as of 2005, did not get to play an important role in Chelsea for reasons obvious. For £10 million, he would be a fantastic buy. He would be different kind of striker than Drogba, Shevchenko, Pizarro and Kalou. Anelka is very strong physically, can be very quick and has a lethal finish. Whatever happened to Berbatov!

After that failed move for Daniel Alves in August this year, he must now be available for a much lesser price. Sevilla’s poor run in the league, Alves’ very public proclamation that he wants to leave for Chelsea and the fact he is cup-tied should all mean that he would cost much lesser than the £22 million that was offered in August. My concern on Alves would remain. He is more effective on the attacks than on defence. Defensively, if we still have a weak link in the right back, we would not have got value for money. Still that’s something the coach can manage. Avram will make it clear to the players on what he expects.

While a Dani Alves deal can still disappear given the cockiness in Sevilla’s approach, there’s a sniff on Maicon, the right back from Inter. It beats me why Inter should sell him or why Maicon would want to move from an incredibly successful Inter this season, and that too in January! May be, he wants to learn English or he likes English weather or it is cheaper to travel from London to the US than from Italy. Reasons can be anything, nowadays.

branislav-ivanovic.jpgRoman wants Avram to ‘consider’ signing Diniyar Bilyaletdinov and Branislav Ivanovic (pic) from Lokomotiv Moscow – the former a creative midfielder/winger and the latter a right back chased by Man Utd. Relatively unknown commodities but Roman wants these guys off Lokomotiv Moscow so that CSKA Moscow gets an advantage?! Avram won’t be able to tell Roman that he doesn’t want to sign unproven players for £20 million as Roman might retort ‘how proven were you by Sep 07′?

Time for another Tiago, with an extra ‘h’ this time. Chelsea are looking to sign Thiago Alcantara, a 16-year old from the Barca reserves. I’m not going to be overly excited. I almost expect to see some AC Milan or Real Madrid hijack the transfer and the kid starts matches for them next season. So there is the chase for another attacking midfielder.

By the way, if you already din’t know, Makelele has had an ear operation and would be unavailable for the next ‘few’ weeks. Certainly he could have chosen to get this operation some time later than now. For four to six weeks, we would be missing Essien, Mikel and Makelele – our army of holding midfielders. This might even force Avram to make changes to the formation and tactics, as Sidwell etc are miles away from the missing trio.

Despite these numerous rumours involving Chelsea, there is absolutely nothing about the outgoing players.That means either we are increasing our squad size or getting rid of some players without much noise. Who should we get rid off this January? Oh, that’s for another post.