Football transfer rumours: Cristiano Ronaldo to Chelsea?

Those men with notebooks, pencils and measuring tapes in the Chelsea Football Club tracksuits are "sizing up an £80m summer move" for Real Madrid goal-getters Gonzalo Higuaín and Cristiano Ronaldo , according to today's Daily Telegraph, which reports that the Stamford Bridge outfit have also brought their kitchen scales into play and are "weighing up" a slightly lower-rent £58.5m for Napoli duo Edinson Cavani and Ezequiel Lavezzi . There may well be some grain of truth to these revelations (all that's needed to stand them up is evidence that some Stamford Bridge minion idly mused "hey, do you think buying Real Madrid goal-getters Gonzalo Higuaín and Cristiano Ronaldo, or perhaps Napoli duo Edinson Cavani and Ezequiel Lavezzi, would be a runner?"), but the paper does counsel caution by pointing out that all Chelsea's plans "are in the early stages, and no contact has been made with clubs". Having said that, yesterday's Sun On Sunday reported that Cavani's agents were "believed to be in London on Friday" to talk turkey with Chelsea bean-counters over a proposed £30m move from Napoli. In today's obligatory mention of Rumour Mill staple Eden Hazard , Chelsea are also limbering up along side Tottenham at the start-line of "the race to lure the highly sought-after" Lille midfielder. With Arsenal, Manchester United and Manchester City also interested in the Belgian midfielder, the excruciating minutiae of his next move has the potential to become the most tedious, drawn-out transfer saga the Rumour Mill has chronicled since Cesc Fàbregas finally left Arsenal for Barcelona. The Heerenveen and Dutch Under-21 beanpole Nikola Zigi-alike Bas Dost has been telling anyone who'll listen that Aston Villa are edging ahead of Valencia in the race to secure his scrawl this summer. Valued at £7m, the Eredivisie's leading scorer is exactly the kind of underwhelming weird-name signing that could prompt Villa fans to stop calling for Alex McLeish's head ... if only for the amount of time it takes them to shrug their shoulders. Elsewhere in Holland, PSV Eindhoven winger Dries Mertens is rumoured to be on the verge of snubbing Liverpool and signing on the dotted line for Bayern Munich instead. Mertens has scored 18 goals in 26 games in the Dutch league this season (about six in 26 in dog-goals) and has long been a target of the Anfield side, but is believed to value regular Champions League football and the possibility of winning league titles on a regular basis ahead of sponsorship deals, the odd Carling Cup final penalty shoot-out win and years and years of history. "He has been asking his friends about life in Germany and he has been encouraged by what he has heard," revealed an unnamed source to The Sun, suggesting that a life spent obeying the red ampelmännchen , maintaining strict silence during the mittagsruhe and carefully recycling his rubbish is one that appeals to Mertens. While it may not be in quite the same league as Chelsea's mooted Higuaín/Ronaldo or Cavani/Levezzi double-swoops, quietly Scottish Norwich City manager Paul Lambert wants to bring Nottingham Forest duo Chris Gunter and Garath McCleary to Carrow Road. Defender Gunter is the better known of the pair being a Welsh international, but having spent the early years of his career at such glamour clubs as Oxford City, Slough Town and Bromley, McCleary recently made headlines by scoring four goals for Forest in last week's remarkable 7-3 win over Leeds. Having seen their manager Brendan Rodgers sign a new long-term deal on Friday, Swansea City fans traumatised by the prospect of bigger, richer clubs poaching the pick of their exciting young team this summer will be delighted to learn that midfielders Leon Britton and Scott Sinclair seem breezily content at the Liberty Stadium, have no plans to move anywhere and are both in negotiations to extend their current contracts. Britton has already said he expects to ink a new deal this week, while Rodgers is confident Sinclair will stay put too. "He is happy here, I have touched base with him moving forward," he said, sounding disturbingly like David Brent.