Football transfer rumours: Neymar to lead Chelsea’s deadline-day haul?

It’s easy to get sniffy about transfer deadline day and its yellow-tie, purple-dildo, day-off-work oddness, people acting like there’s football going on when there isn’t. But one way or another, we’re guaranteed an assortment of grown adults making royal shows of themselves and there’s nothing more football than that, so off we go.

Chelsea have been looking a bit ropey recently – which is strange when you consider their director of football is such a natural, he knew to appoint himself despite having no experience whatsoever in the game or the job. As such, there’s absolutely no chance anyone has taken massive advantage, no club, player or agent demanding fees well over the usual, but now PSG fancy having a go, offering him Neymar. Amazingly, it seems that a club whose funding relies on a nation-state can’t simply buy Vitinha, Nuno Mendes, Fabián Ruiz, Renato Sanches, Nordi Mukiele and Hugo Ekitiké in a single summer without bothering financial fair play rules. It’s an outrage!

Nevertheless, other reports suggest Paris have already withdrawn the offer. Luckily for Chelsea, though, Todd has other ideas, having offered Barcelona more cash for Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang. This would be not unamusing, given that not that long ago, Arsenal paid him a fortune to just go away, and the deal looks likely to happen – the player is, presumably, eager to join an illustrious line of centre-forwards that also featured Mateja Kezman, Andriy Shevchenko, Fernando Torres, Radamel Falcao, Álvaro Morata, Gonzalo Higuaín and Romelu Lukaku. In case that deal falls through, Chelsea are also paying attention to Milan’s Rafael Leão – though even Todd might be put off by a £126m price tag.

Nor is that all. Though he has already added Kalidou