Mirror Sport: Roma Attempting £25 million Move For Chelsea Defender Kurt Zouma

By my count we've published 86 transfer posts this summer, a good chunk of which was dedicated to Edin Dzeko, but as far as rumor mills go, Roma's hasn't been terribly off base. Salvatore Sirigu made a lot of sense, even if it's hard to imagine Roma plunking down nearly €15 million for a keeper they could've had for a fraction of the price a few years earlier, while the more benign rumors, Georginio Wijnaldum for instance, made sense; Roma could use an athletic backup for Miralem Pjanic anyway, so it wasn't as arbitrary as it may have seemed.

In the face of all that relative sanity, The Daily Mirror just dropped the mother of all ridiculous transfer rumors on us, suggesting that Roma are attempting to lure Chelsea's 20-year-old star centerback in the making, Kurt Zouma, to the capital for the tidy sum of £25 million, or roughly €35 million.

Yes, the British press would have you believe that Roma would meet and/or eclipse their club transfer record with little more than two weeks remaining in the transfer window. Never mind the fact they still haven't even closed on Lucas Digne. Yeah, we can wrap up Zouma in a day or so, sure!

Furthermore, this rumor would see Roma, once again, enter into a tenuous transfer triangle with Chelsea, with Everton playing the role of Fiorentina in this instance. It's no secret that Jose Mourinho has an eye for John Stones, but Everton hasn't bent to The Special One's will just yet, meaning Walter Sabatini would have to sit idly by as the two English clubs handled their business, as more realistic and affordable defensive options pass Roma by. Not that Zouma isn't worth the wait, but the circumstances surrounding this rumor are spurious at best.

Now, if Roma can, as the Daily Mirror suggests, at least coax a loan out of this, great, but £25 million is damn near uncharted water for Roma, and this late in the game, you have to wonder if Sabatini has the navigating skills to see this one through.