The Chelsea Daily Drivel.

The Chelsea Daily Drivel is a daily update of all the stories concerning our club, the rumours, the opinions and more....

So here is the latest from around the web on Tuesday 6th July 2010 including: Roman flies out to sign Fernando Torres?, Hodgson wants Joe Cole, Chelsea in for Sami Khedira, Bayern Munich warn Chelsea hands off!, The club release more players, Carlo Ancelotti talks up the Academy once more, The players return to training and Carlo Ancelotti speaks at the first day of training as he explains now its time to work!.

Firstly to the exciting news that Roman Abramovich is out in South Africa trying to capture the signing of Fernando Torres. This story has been around all summer but has taken more significance with the news that Roman is out there and involved in negotiations. Is reported that Liverpool want 70m and Chelsea have made an opening bid of 35m but are prepared to go as high as 50m.

Manchester City are monitoring the situation and are likely to throw money at Liverpool, but the lure of Champions League competition looks like will be enough if Torres decides to leave Liverpool. We need to remember that the player has yet to decide if he doesn want to leave, but the news as reported on The Telegraph website is encouraging.

Now to news that new Liverpool boss Roy Hodgson is looking to sign Joe Cole. The Sun reports that Hodgson see's Joe Cole as an ideal replacement for Yossi Benayoun. A source from Liverpool has said:

"Roy knows he faces a tough job in persuading Joe to move north, But he sees him as the ideal playmaker to shape a new era at Anfield and hopes the player will be excited by this new challenge."

It looks as though its a straight fight between Spurs, Liverpool and Arsenal for the signing of Cole.

Now to news of another of the German World Cup stars being linked to Chelsea. Sami Khedira is now being linked with us and The Sun reports that his club Stuttgart are looking to cash in on the 12m rated player before his contract expires next summer. For me, this could just be paper talk again as the players agent is looking for a better deal for his man. Let's see if there is any substance with this story in the coming weeks.

Now to Bayern Munich. Its been rumoured over the Summer that Chelsea are looking at Sebastien Schweinsteiger and more recently Thomas Muller. However, a spokesperson for the club has said the following:

"If any club wants to make an official approach for any of our players it would be useless. Our reaction would always be the same - no way absolutely no way. We won`t sell any of these players. We are in a very comfortable situation, we don`t have financial pressure at all."

So it looks like all the stories and reports have now been put to bed. Shame cause I really like Schweinsteiger.

Now to news of more departures from the club and this time its players below first team level. As reported on chelseafc.com yesterday the club have released the following:

They are goalkeepers Niclas Heimann and Aldi Haxhia and outfield players Nana Ofori-Twumasi, Nikki Ahamed, Tom Hayden, Liam Bridcutt and Kenny Strickland. Good luck to all these players for the future.

Now to news that Carlo Ancelotti has again reaffirmed his intentions to bring Academy players through to first team level at Chelsea. He is quoted on Mirror.co.uk as saying:

“I was at the Final and it was very important for the Academy which is working well at the moment. We need them to have important moments like this because it was another fantastic success and this is another reason to say it was a fantastic season for Chelsea.

We have some talented young players here that work every day with the first team in training and they are very close to stepping up to the squad on matchdays. This is our aim - to put more players from the Academy up into the first team in the future, so this success was very important for us.”

Its great again to here Carlo's intentions with the Academy players and will give each of them a lift as they can see if they apply themselves, develop and are good enough they will get their chance.

Now to Cobham and the players (excluding the World Cup particpants) took part in the first of the Pre Season training sessions yesterday. New signing Yossi Benayoun was joined by Petr Cech, Hilario, Michael Essien and also John Obi Mikel. Players who also reported back for training were loanee's Michael Mancienne, Franco Di Santo, Scott Sinclair, Jack Cork and Ryan Betrand. Jose Bosingwa is not yet ready to return to training.

Finally in todays edition of the Chelsea Daily Drivel the focus turns to Carlo Ancelotti at Cobham yesterday. Ancelotti took his first session of pre season with the players he had available. He said:

'We started on Monday, last year we started at the same time and we need maybe five weeks to prepare the team, to do the best physical preparation, We will have the other players on July 22 and 26, but for the first games of pre-season they will not be involved.'

It could be a little different this year, a little difficult because we don't have all the players to start the season but we can still do a good job,' Benayoun I think is a good player, we need to have a player with quality who can play in the midfield. He can play in every position in midfield and for this I think he will be a very good player for us for next season.'

More tomorrow. KTBFFH everyone!