Sensational doesn’t even begin to cover it if any of this report is actually true from French outlet SFR Sport, but they claim that the offer that Chelsea rejected from Tianjin Quanjian for Diego Costa back in January was to the tune of £90m (€107m), with wages to match for Diego over the course of a three-year contract (€30-35m annually). This is presumably the offer that was part-catalyst to the supposed “BLAZING ROW” between Costa and Conte last month, which has long since been smoothed over.

INFO @SFR_Sport| @ChelseaFC declined 107 millions € offer from #Tianjin. @diegocosta was attracted by huge offer: 100M€ for 3 seasons — Johnny Séverin (@jseverin11) February 25, 2017

But the story doesn’t end there. SFR then claim that while Chelsea rebuffed that outrageous offer — partly due to the impossibility of finding a replacement for Costa in the winter transfer window — the Blues told Tianjin to come back in the summer with €150m.

#Tianjin has been told by @ChelseaFC to come back in summer with a 150M€ offer to sign @diegocosta ! The chinese club intend to do so. — Johnny Séverin (@jseverin11) February 25, 2017

And that’s not all, because apparently Tianjin “intend” to do so, even though there are now new financial (and squad) regulations in the Chinese Super League, which were put in place precisely to curb spending in this overinflated market.

The €150m would be a new world record transfer and while it sounds utterly unbelievable, if some team were actually willing to give Chelsea this much for Costa, we could surely secure a proper replacement or two. Meanwhile, Costa seems quite happy at Chelsea and we have even brought forward talks for a contract extension.

So, again, this SFR report sounds far too sensational for public consumption, but maybe there’s a nugget of truth in there somewhere. The next chapter of the Diego Costa contract saga is just beginning.