With most of today's back pages full of talk about Gareth Bale's imminent appointment as successor to Pope Benedict XVI and the apparently frank exchange of views involving Chelsea managers Rafael Benítez and John Terry at the club's training ground, the number of column inches left for idle transfer tittle-tattle are few and far between.
Arguments involving Benítez will soon be a thing of the past at Cobham, if reports in the German sport magazine Kicker that Roman Abramovich is planning to appoint the Bayern Munich coach Jupp Heynckes as Chelsea's manager turn out to have any substance. With Pep Guardiola on his way to Bayern come season's end, Heynckes seems as good a candidate as any to become Chelsea's next big-name former manager.
In other Chelsea news, the Daily Mail "exclusively" reveals that the fractious club are planning to offer Southampton over £10m for their 17-year-old left-back Luke Shaw. Having already had offers for the defender rejected last summer and in the January transfer window, Chelsea will up their bid, loan Shaw back to Southampton for a season and then bring him back to Stamford Bridge as an experienced, ready-made replacement for Ashley Cole.
Having announced half-year profits of £17.8m on Monday, to go in a club kitty already containing the guts of £124m, Arsenal may spend £7.5m of their cash reserves on the Eintracht Frankfurt central midfielder Sebastian Rode, but will have to fight off interest from Bundesliga sides Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund if they are to succeed in their bid to bring the 22-year-old to the Emirates. Arsenal's need for a nails-hard centre-half has been well documented and the club seem to have decided that Athletic Bilbao's curly-haired Venezuela-born Basque Fernando Amorebieta fits the bill. The good news for the Gunners is that the 27-year-old is available on a free transfer at the end of the season, but the inevitable bad news is that the queue of suitors giving him the glad eye includes Serie A sides Juventus, Internazionale and Milan.
Manchester United have offered Nani's "people" a deal worth £90,000 per week but the Portuguese winger's "people" are apparently holding out for around 50% more, in a state of affairs that has prompted something of an impasse at Old Trafford. Should Nani move on, the Daily Star report that United might replace him with another Portuguese winger – a journeyman pro who plays for a little-known team in Madrid and goes by the name of Cristiano Ronaldo.
United are also interested in the Galatasaray striker Burak Yilmaz, scorer of 33 goals in 34 games in last season's Turkish Super Lig and the second player in history, after Sergen Yalcin, to play for the Turkish Big Four of Galatasaray, Fernerbahce, Besiktas and Trabzonspor.
With Aston Villa's Premier League future anything but assured, their 21-year-old Austrian striker Andreas Weimann is understandably reluctant to commit to the new, improved offer club blazers are waving under his nose, according to the Daily Mail.
And finally, no Rumour Mill worth its salt would be complete without some mention of Manchester City, who are prepared to take a £17m punt on the Sevilla defensive midfielder Geoffrey Kondogbia, according to Spanish website Estadio Deportivo. A French youth international who chose the Spanish side over Reading last season, Kondogbia is of central African descent and can play at left-back or in the heart of defence.
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