Although he's never gotten the attention that his Real Madrid or indeed Germany teammates have received, Sami Khedira is, when healthy, one of the better all-around midfielders in Europe and more than capable of improving any squad. Including Real Madrid, but unfortunately for them (and perhaps him) their new Galacticos policy is seeing them move away from functional players like Khedira and pushing hard for flashier candidates. James Rodriguez and Toni Kroos are in, and Khedira is definitely out:

Ancelotti: "Khedira has been given permission to leave, so I am not interested in where he goes." — Dermot Corrigan (@dermotmcorrigan) August 22, 2014

This obviously isn't straight up Chelsea news, although we've been linked to Khedira intermittently over the last several months. He could be going anywhere, and rumour has it that Bayern Munich are most likely to pick him up. I'm mentioning this because we should be getting ourselves involved, or at least asking some serious questions about how we might accommodate a talent like Khedira in the squad. Behind Nemanja Matic there's not a great deal of trustworthy depth on the defensive side of things, and I'd hope we're sniffing around now that we know Khedira's on the market.

Is he an absolute must-have, to sign at any cost? No, of course not. Khedira's on high wages, his transfer fee might be Real Madridy, he's not homegrown and he's coming off a fairly severe knee injury. But his World Cup performances suggest that he's back to something near his best, and the last time Los Blancos got rid of a star midfielder because he didn't play sexy enough football it turned out alright for us*.

*Please do not interpret this as me saying that Sami Khedira plays like Claude Makélélé. He does not.