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Chelsea defender Branislav Ivanovic has claimed that he expects the club to play an attractive style of football in the coming campaign. The club wasted no time in strengthen their squad after the opening of the transfer window. They have brought in Diego Costa, Cesc Fabregas, and Filipe Luis, while Thibaut Courtois has also been recalled from his loan spell at Atletico Madrid. These three acquisitions are expected to bring a different style of football to the club. Cesc Fabregas, in particular, is known as a player who can find the precise passes to unlock defences.
Last season, Chelsea won no major silverware but they did come close to several trophies like the Premier league and Champions League. It was a widely held belief that the club did not have a top-class striker who could provide the cutting edge in tough matches. This attribute has been corrected following the signing of Costa from Atletico Madrid for around £ 32 million. The Spanish international has been looking excellent in pre-season. This has made Ivanovic confident about the upcoming season. He also says that the club are now ready to play the attractive style of football that owner Roman Abramovich is especially known to be fond of.
“I think we will be much more creative in attack with the new players that we got in the summer. Now we have a lot of players that are really strong in attacking moves, so I believe that we will be really strong. And I also hope that we will be strong enough to win some trophies,” said Ivanovic, who has been linked with a move to French club PSG in the last few weeks. The defender, though, looks set to stay at Stamford Bridge since he remains a key part of the defence under Mourinho.

Branislav Ivanovic is believed to be on the radar of Arsenal, but, it doesn’t seem that the Gunners would succeed in securing the services of the defender.

The transfer fee that Arsenal has planned to offer Chelsea is somewhere close to 8 million Pounds. In all likelihood, this bid would be rejected by the Blues as they rate the Serbian international fairly highly and would not let him go at a penny less than 15 million Pounds.

Also, Ivanovic would demand very high salary, probably about 150 thousand Pounds on a weekly basis, which Arsenal is unlikely to agree on.

The Gunners are expected to lose Thomas Vermaelen who has been one of their key centre-backs in the last few years. The Belgian is rumoured to be all set to make his way to Old Trafford.

So, Arsene Wenger is looking for a player whom he can bring in as Vermaelen’s replacement. The Gunners boss admires Ivanovic a lot because of his ability to play at various positions and thus, he is interested in him.

Despite being a centre-back, Ivanovic can do a decent job if asked to play at right.

Ivanovic is understood to be quite open to take a transfer away from Chelsea. According to the reports, he hasn’t reached any agreement with Chelsea management regarding contract extension.

The defender had got along pretty well with the new Chelsea boss Jose Mourinho during the last season. He had started 36 out of the 38 matches in the Premier League and had even scored 3 goals.

He had played a key role in the victory of the Blues against the eventual league Champions Manchester City in an away game in February.

Ivanovic has been at Stamford Bridge since the winter of 2008 and in this duration, he has made a total of 269 appearances for Chelsea.

Paris Saint Germain is weighing up another move for a Chelsea player as they plan to make a move for unsettled Serbian defender Branislav Ivanovic.

Having already completed the signing of one Blues defender in David Luiz this summer, the cash rich French club is looking to bolster its defense further with the addition of Luiz’s former team mate for a fee of around £ 15 million.

Having already allowed Brazilian defender Alex to leave for AC Milan and with Barcelona interested in signing young full back Marquinhos, Laurent Blanc is looking at alternative defenders to strengthen the team’s back line as he looks to find a winning formula for Europe.

The 30 year old right back still has two years left on his current contract with the Blues but he is looking for a more secure and long term deal at Stamford Bridge. And if Chelsea doesn’t provide Branislav Ivanovic with the kind of extension he is looking for, a move to the Parc des Princes might become too tempting.

Chelsea have followed in the footsteps of Arsenal and Manchester United of offering only one year rolling contracts to players over thirty and that makes the Serbian’s hopes of securing a long term deal harder to get.

Jose Mourinho has been scouting for a solution to his problems at left back for some time and with the signing of Filipe Luis from Atletico Madrid looming large, Cesar Azpilicueta could be moved to his favored right back role, meaning the Serbian right back will have to sit out large parts of the season or play a bit part role.

And at 30 years of age, Branislav Ivanovic is not ready to accept that and this has led to increased speculation about a departure for greener pastures from London this summer.

Ahead of the match with Chelsea, Liverpool manager Brendan Rodgers has stated that the striker Luis Suarez has come a long way since the famous biting incident involving Chelsea defender Branislav Ivanovic. In this fixture 12 months ago, Suarez was found guilty of biting Ivanovic. The English FA then banned him for a record 10 matches, a suspension that was carried into this campaign as well. However, Suarez has become a player transformed since then. He has managed to get the club close to the Premier league title, while on a personal level he has won several titles like the PFA Player of the Year award.

As Chelsea will be the visitors to Anfield this weekend, tension between the two clubs has been heightened because of the incident 12 months ago. Rodgers, though, has tried to defend his player by saying that his performances on the pitch now do the talking. Ivanovic accepted the apology from the striker that came out immediately after the incident. The pair had already met each other in the clash earlier at Stamford Bridge this season. Chelsea came out on top in that match with a 2-1 win. Suarez comes into the match this weekend as the top scorer in the league with 30 goals to his name.

“He is a brilliant talent. I think the supporters have seen him mature over the course of the last season. I think he was in a real low moment after that game, but he has gone away and probably looked in the mirror and reflected on himself because he is not that type of guy and it probably just spilled over. He is a really intelligent man who fits the values of this club, which is all about humility, class and he has all of that,” said Rodgers.