While a few stray reports continue to maintain that Chelsea remain in with a chance to gazump the gazumpers for Romelu Lukaku’s signature, that ship seems to have sailed quickly and unerringly into the night. Now, with rumors of discontent once again building, Chelsea are supposedly ready to re-double efforts to secure a big-money striker signing and the two obvious candidates there are Real Madrid’s Álvaro Morata and Torino FC’s Andrea Belotti.

Even without debating the merits of spending £80m on either player — and neither Real nor Torino look at all open to budging on their valuations — we are faced with a few other hurdles as well.

In Morata’s case, even though he was supposedly all excited to join Manchester United, he’s more than ready to “keep fighting” for the Real Madrid cause as well. That’s from Real Madrid independent media Marca themselves, who posit that the only reason the €90m-rated Morata might get pushed out is if Real decide to secure Kylian Mbappé’s signature this summer (as opposed to next summer), though other reports claim that it would actually be Gareth Bale who’d end up on the chopping block.

Meanwhile, over at Torino, the security of Belotti’s €100m buyout clause is ready to be sweetened by the club offering the captain’s armband to the 23-year-old striker. That’s from today’s Tuttosport (via Inside Futbol) who claim that while Conte is a big fan of his fellow Italian striker, the big role offered by Torino in a World Cup year could outweigh any other interest.

The Chelsea front office (continue to) have their work cut out for them.