Chelsea wants Atletico to pay £50m for Diego Costa

Just three days ago , the Daily Mirror claimed a new and improved Atlético Madrid bid incoming for Diego Costa, raising their previously rumored maximum of £20m by an additional £6m. Whether that bid ever arrived is anyone's guess, but now the Mirror are reporting that Chelsea and Atlético are set to start negotiations with Chelsea's asking price a fair amount more than the £26m Atléti have managed to scrape together so far: £50m.

In any case, the Chelsea side of negotiations will be lead, as usual, by Marina Granovskaia, and with her reputation as someone who drives a hard bargain, we're unlikely to see Chelsea budging from the apparent £50m valuation we've now placed on Costa. That's a significant drop from the £70m+ that China might have paid once upon a time, but still almost double what Atlétio are supposedly ready to offer.

So, just the small matter of a £24m gap and of course the whole part about what to do with Costa for the six months before he can actually play for Atléti to figure out. Unfortunately, the Mirror offer no guidance in that regard other than a vague suggestion of a six-month loan somewhere.

On a related note, the Mirror also jump on the Lewandowski bandwagon, which combined with a lack of recent news on the Lukaku front, is one of the flavors of the day. Yet, it's nothing more than a bit of agent shenanigans with practically no suggestion at all from Munich of Lewandowski leaving anytime soon.