Chelsea FC Transfer Rumours: Friday Bits And Pieces

We're almost halfway through the January transfer window now and so far we've barely had a sniff of anything interesting (Gary Cahill is not interesting). But there are murmurings of things going on right no so it's probably best to round them up right here. Let's take a look at the main storylines, from least to most sexy:

Josh McEachran

Glad that's all finally wrapped up then. McEachran deserves some time - he's obviously not ready to start for Chelsea yet, but he's still incredibly young and hopefully he gets enough time with the Swans to aid his development. I suppose we've got a second-favourite Premier League team now.

Alex

Chelsea have apparently turned down a £3M bid from Queens Park Rangers for the want-away Brazilian defender. I'd a) prefer more money for him and b) prefer to sell Alex overseas (to Juventus perhaps?), and that's probably the angle the club are taking too. It's funny how annoyed we get with the idea of selling a player within the league just in case they come back to bite us. If they're not good enough to play for Chelsea, we shouldn't be too concerned about them going to a direct opponent. Of course, there's some question as to whether Alex really isn't good enough to play anymore and I certainly don't to see Ashley Cole decapitated by one of his free kicks, sooo...

Gary Cahill

Chelsea failed to comes with Bolton defender Gary Cahill in time to be registered for the match against Sunderland, but that's probably not a big deal. There's plenty of window left. Andre Villas-Boas is making noises about alternatives, but you'd have to suspect that that's just a negotiation ploy in trying to get Cahill to come down from his rather unreasonable-sounding wage demands.

For as long as the rumour of Cahill to Chelsea has been floating around, two things have been obvious to me. First, he's not good enough to start regularly. Second, he'll want to play or be compensated for a lack of ability to get into the team. This is a recipe for a bad deal, and I won't be happy if Chelsea cave into ridiculous demands from a bench player. If he gets his hundred grand a week I might cry.

Frank Lampard

Frank is not available at any price.

-Andre Villas-Boas. Source: BBC.

Well duh.

Eden Hazard

The Mail is reporting that Chelsea 'plan' on lodging a £25M bid for Eden Hazard. That will not get Chelsea Eden Hazard, and it certainly won't get them the Belgian international this month. Saying the Blues plan on bidding £25M for Hazard is sort of like saying I'm planning on offering the driver of the Maserati that nearly ran me over the other day a few hundred dollars for his car.

I think we all know that getting Hazard would be pretty awesome and it would give Chelsea a real opportunity to play around with their shape. It's nice that we're being linked to such a good player, and we've got as good a shot as any of actually getting him eventually, but at this point I'd be surprised if he left Lille before summertime.