According to rumour and some weird quotes from his agent, Chelsea have made a £22M bid for Tottenham Hotspur midfielder Luka Modric, which has (surprise) been rejected by the Spurs board. Modric is believed to be willing to leave Tottenham in order to secure Champions League football if an offer comes in that's good for both him and the club, so it's not surprising that Chelse made a play, but that bid is apparently far too low for Spurs to be willing to part ways with their most creative presence, who arrived for £16M from Dinamo Zagreb three years ago.

Luka is happy at Spurs but if an offer came in that was acceptable to the club and player, we would be willing to discuss it. In my opinion, £22M is a valuation that is too low for the player.

-Nikky Vuhan, Luka Modric's agent. Source: BBC.

It's worth pointing out that the quotes regarding the £22M price tag all appear to be in reaction to the rumour rather than the source of said rumour, so I'm not sure how legitimate this is. However, if true it's interesting that Chelsea are operating like this - they don't usually make really low offers for players to start negotiations, but they've apparently lowballed Tottenham, Palermo, and Udinese for each of Modric, Javier Pastore and Alexis Sanchez, despite a) having tonnes of money to spend and b) it being a seller's market.

It's all very odd, but these rumours get me dreaming of a Pastore/Modric midfield, which makes me mildly giddy. We're probably going to have to wait for the appointment of our new manager before we see anyone coming into the club, but I'd guess that once that happens the dominoes start to fall very fast.