The long-rumbling Eden Hazard transfer saga might be about to take another turn, as the Spanish football press is reporting that Real Madrid are lining up a gargantuan £180 million bid to finally pry Hazard away from Chelsea.

According to Spanish football website Don Balon, Madrid president Florentino Perez is preparing "a madness of 200 million euros", and he is ready to unleash this madness on Chelsea soon as the transfer window in Spain closes on 31 August.

A few caveats: there's no reference to insiders and sources within the club, and as it's entirely in Spanish we might be missing some nuance here. Our translation refers to Perez as the "maximum leader of the Madridista entity", which is pretty good.

"You want to keep those type of players so fingers crossed nothing happens," Wise said to beIN Sports, possibly while looking yearningly at the photo of Hazard stamping on that ballboy's kidneys which he keeps in a locket around his neck. "I think he’s quite loyal and I think he wants to stay at Chelsea, I really do."

One thing we know for sure is that Madrid are in for Iago Aspas of Celta Vigo and Spain, who turned himself around after taking possibly the most notoriously terrible corner of recent history and contributing to Liverpool's title charge of 2013/14 falling apart, and has since become very good indeed.