Porto battle to keep Hulk

Chelsea will have to pay more than £40million to have any chance of landing Porto striker Hulk before Friday's deadline.

The Blues are still in the hunt to land the Brazilian and reports have claimed they will try and wrap up a deal in the next couple of days, but Porto are refusing to do business until their valuation has been met. It has now been revealed that Zenit St Petersburg have failed with a bid of 50million euro (£39.5m) and the Portuguese side want to get as close to his 100million euro buy-out clause as possible. The 26-year-old's agent has claimed the player's future will be sorted in the next 24 hours but he is going nowhere unless a club stump up the asking price. "It was Porto who rejected €50million for Hulk from Zenit," Porto president Pinto da Costa told reporters. "I think it is ridiculous to hear that Zenit's board did not sanction such an offer, when two of their chiefs were here to present that exact bid for the player."