Chelsea transfer speculation mounts

The coming transfer window is of special importance to Chelsea. Firstly the team is rightly favourites for the title and after three seasons of Manchester United domestic dominance funds will surely be found if it can rubber stamp a title charge. Secondly the Africa Cup of Nations takes Essien, Drogba, Kalou and Mikel away for a month - and given the impact that international tournaments have on players they are unlikely to be back to normal until mid-February. Thirdly the transfer ban on Chelsea has been lifted briefly for an appeal - but the club must plan on the basis that the ban will be imposed and that they can make no more transfers until the summer before the 2011/12 season.

With that in mind Carlo Ancelotti's recent comments (at this point I would usually put a link to these comments, but with national newspapers threatening to sue websites that link to them I won't) regarding 'not needing any additions to his squad' must be taken with a pinch of salt.

Today Chelsea are linked with three players valued at around £80m - these are the kind of players that will make a league title success much more likely (as opposed to the Santa Cruz + Tevez + Lescott + Bridge type signings of a similar value).

The Sun reckon that Chelsea have given up on Franck Ribery (Which may not be a shock considering that Bayern Munich value him at £60m) and instead want to sign the hard running Bastian Schweinsteiger (The German Essien? The German Milner?) for around £25m. You can't have too many goalscoring midfielders (19 goals from 72 Germany caps is a good record) and at 25 years old Schweinsteiger is a good age and would be competition for Ballack and Lampard.

Almost as an adendum The Sun suggest that Atletico Madrid schemer/striker Sergio Aguero expects to complete a £32m move to Chelsea next month. Atletico's season has been dreadful and with a squad that needs reshaping they may well be prepared to fund that with the sale of their remaining big-ticket players.

On top of this there is a report in The Telegraph that Chelsea will spend £20m on Wolfsburg striker Edin Dzeko. Dzeko has had a good Champions' League campaign but with his team now demoted to the dread Europa League where they will play Villarreal Wolfsburg may well be ready to sell.

If Chelsea can bag two players of this standard in January then the odds on their retaining the title will surely collapse.