By dixon9
June 11 2009
Possible Chelsea target Frank Ribery will be a much more expensive nut to crack than first thought – Bayern Munich have quoted a huge £65 million fee as the only way to obtain the players services.
£65 million is still not the £100 million Uli Hoeness recently said that would be required (but then again, who takes anything he says seriously?), nevertheless this current valuation is much higher than potential buying clubs imagined it would be.The coveted winger was said to be of great interest to Chelsea although The Times now states that Chelsea have yet to make a bid for the player. Ribery is also reported to have said that he doesn’t like the idea of playing in England due to the weather!
Ribery is certainly on the Real Madrid shopping list but their enormous transaction for Ronaldo may possibly involve Florentino Perez leaving the way clear for Ferguson to bid for the player in a gentleman’s agreement. If the Ronaldo transfer does go through quickly then Man Utd must be favourites to sign him – should those negotiations become protracted and acrimonious then that might just provide an opportunity for Abramovich to leave Bayern Munich with a fast time-scale ultimatum.
With Malouda´s final improvement in form to what Chelsea fans imagined it would be when we first bought the player and Ashley Cole’s excellent performances, we seem pretty strong on the left although Ribery is definitely on Ancelotti´s wish list.
Given the circumstances I would say that Zhirkov is more than enough to re-strengthen and improve options on that side – although he has apparently stated he would prefer Barcelona, insinuating that he would be on the bench too often at Stamford Bridge.

