Jamie Vardy to Chelsea? It could be a blockbuster move…

Here’s a plotline idea for those Hollywood chaps apparently negotiating to turn the Jamie Vardy story into a movie: this January, their man is the subject of a massive bid from the English champions and signs for Chelsea.

It is not implausible. Chelsea look as though they are beginning to regroup, to play in an organised, hard-to-beat fashion again. Against Tottenham they appeared to have found the keys to the bus. Yet what they still lack are goals.

For whatever reason, Diego Costa and Eden Hazard, the men whose strikes took them to the title last season, have been unable to find the net this. And Jose Mourinho doesn’t have anything in reserve. He clearly doesn’t trust Loic Remy, while the presence of the spent force that was once Radamel Falcao looks increasingly like the result of a cosy arrangement with Jorge Mendes – the superagent the pair share – to be parked somewhere the money is good. Mourinho needs a man to score goals. Urgently.

And there is currently no-one hotter – outside the untouchables of Barcelona and Bayern Munich – than Vardy. And however much the new owners of Leicester City may have had their ambition piqued by the success of Claudio Ranieri’s side this season, Chelsea have the depth of resources to make even the most stubborn eyes water.

They learned their lesson in the failure to bring in John Stones over the summer. Next time they will wheel out the money cannon at the first opportunity to blow all resistance away.

Mind, there are plenty who would find such a plot twist ridiculous. Harry Redknapp for one insists it just wouldn’t happen. This is not to diminish Vardy’s achievements this season – Redknapp has been lauding the player to the skies – but it is, the former Spurs boss insists, indicative of the times that Chelsea won’t look in his direction.

Redknapp believes there is an inherent snobbery at the very top of English football that would make those in a position of power at Stamford Bridge believe Vardy isn’t good enough for them. He suggests that the new way of recruitment, the rooms full of quants keying stats into computers, is inherently biased against someone like Vardy. In his view, the transfer committees holding sway in most of the top sides now would prefer to buy in a Serbian striker from Anderlecht than an Englishman from a less elevated side (even one currently some 12 places above them). He laments the switch from scouts on the ground to computer nerds in the office and suggests it is a system which takes the focus away from what is going on around you in preference for what might be happening elsewhere.

He may have a point. But the Hollywood man should not necessarily despair of his storyline having a sudden upward trajectory this January. The other thing about recruitment in football is that it is prone to following fashion. You see it time and again in the appointment of managers. Bosses are recruited as much because they fulfil the current flavour of the month as because of their credentials.

The recent trend for earnest young Britons that saw the elevation of Brendan Rodgers, Garry Monk and Tim Sherwood has been quickly dissipated. With Mauricio Pochettino demonstrating quite what a clever coach he is, however, you can bet your life savings that a lively, pressing-oriented Argentine will be invited to manage in the Premier League before long. And if it’s not Diego Simeone, then don’t rule out Alex Sabella, who has the singular advantage of speaking the language.

So it is with players. What Vardy’s triumphant season has demonstrated is that it is in a club’s self-interest to widen their search for talent beyond the conventional. It is to Leicester’s enormous credit that they invested in a player whose previous experience would have appeared entirely unsuitable to those obsessed with stats and tables. And it took them time fully to exploit his excellence.

Vardy wasn’t exactly ripping up trees last season. Indeed there were plenty who absolutely fulfilled Redknapp’s charge of snobbery by suggesting that his elevation to the England squad back then provided pointed evidence of the shortage of home talent. Nobody is saying that now.

Equally the success of Dele Alli at Spurs has proven the effectiveness of scouring your own doorstep. A midfielder from Milton Keynes may not have flickered on the radar of Manchester United or Chelsea, but Spurs unearthed a gem. And for a fraction of the cost of, to mention but two names, Pedro and Memphis Depay.

Which makes you think others will be become much more attentive of what is going on around them.

Take a look, for instance, at Bournemouth. Their team that drew with Everton on Saturday had half a dozen members who were bought from teams lower down the league pyramid than Bournemouth were at the time they signed. And while nobody could suggest the club are exactly lauding it in the Premier League, at least they are playing with conviction, spirit and heart. Which no-one could say of players bought in by the smart recruitment specialists at Aston Villa and Newcastle United.

Besides, there is a precedent for a Vardy-style purchase by Chelsea. In January 2008 the club bought Nicolas Anelka from Bolton. True, Anelka’s CV was somewhat more elevated than Fleetwood and Stocksbridge Park Steels, but then he hadn’t just scored in eleven consecutive Premier League matches. Hollywood, you never know. It may yet happen.