David Hytner’s full story on the Giroud/Batshuayi/Aubameyang triple-swoop will be online very shortly, but starts thus:

Olivier Giroud is primed to join Chelsea from Arsenal in a deal worth £17.5m, which will pave the way for Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang to move from Borussia Dortmund to Arsenal. Michy Batshuayi is set to complete the interlocking transfers with a loan from Chelsea to Dortmund. Dortmund gave Aubameyang permission to travel to London on Tuesday in order to undergo a medical at Arsenal and complete the finer details of a deal that is valued at £60m. But they had made it clear that they would not sign off on the transfer until they had sourced a replacement.

Chelsea have wanted to offload Batshuayi but they, too, had refused to do so without a replacement – a player to lighten the load on the first-choice centre-forward, Alvaro Morata. They turned to Giroud and he is set to smooth the wheels of the deals.