Chelsea’s Aldi shop, Graham Potter’s cornrows, and Todd Boehly’s deja Ru

We are witnessing a passing of the baton. For the better part of two decades now, any emerging attacking talent bold or intrepid enough to make a mark on football at a global level has been neatly pigeon-holed beneath one of two umbrellas. Almost without exception, they have been labelled as either ‘The New Lionel Messi’, or, in somewhat rarer cases, ‘The Next Cristiano Ronaldo’. No pressure, lads.

But the times, they are a-changin’. No longer do tastemakers hanker and pine for the second coming of an Argentine alien or a perma-tanned attention vacuum. Instead, they want ‘The New Kylian Mbappe’, ‘The Next Erling Haaland’ - and in the case of the latter, they seem to think they have a new contender for his crown on their hands. Rasmus Hojlund - with his name like an Aldi own-brand equivalent - is the unfortunate heir apparent, encumbered as he will now be with the weight of expectation.

You see, the thing with this whole ‘New’ phenomenon is that the players in question are never actually as good as those they are tipped to emulate. If they were, after all, then we would be calling some other lanky Scandinavian kid ‘The New Rasmus Hojlund’ instead. But we’re not.

Hojlund has hit seven goals in 24 games for Atalanta this season, which in and of itself, is pretty decent going for a 20-year-old in one of Europe’s elite top flights. But the campaign before last, when Haaland was of the age that his Danish counterpart is now, he hit 41 in 41. There are levels to this.

Nonetheless, Hojlund is attracting interest, and according to the Daily Mail, Chelsea are monitoring his situation. They’ve been watching, they’ve been waiting, in the shadows for Rasmus.

Speaking of Chelsea, Graham Potter (remember him?) is understood to have snubbed relegation-threatened Leicester City, with the Evening Standard suggesting that he would rather take a break until the end of the season to gather himself and lick his wounds. Seemingly, Potter has no stomach for two catastophic hits to his professional reputation in one campaign - and honestly, who can blame him?

Pocket the compensation, Graham, get yourself booked into some swanky all-inclusive resort on a Caribbean island with no phone signal and an over-abundance of tiger prawns, and just relax. Be kind to yourself, buddy. Come back in time for preseason, maybe with a radical new look, like a fresh set of cornrows or something, and go again.

And finally, Football Insider claim that the Blues have been ‘dazzled’ in an interview with Sporting CP boss Ruben Amorim. What’s that, you say, a bright young manager who has steadily and consistently built his reputation over the past few years, widely acknowledged as a shoe-in for a top continental job at some point in the near future, finally being handed his big break by a Chelsea board who are eager to bring in a replacement for their latest dugout casuality sooner rather than later? It’s all a bit deja vu. Or deja Ru, if you will.