With less than a month to go until the start of the Premier League season and just over six weeks of the transfer window remaining, Chelsea's increasingly desperate search for a new first-choice striker goes on.
ESPN FC runs through the state of play with each of the frontmen who have featured in what has become the soap opera of the summer at Stamford Bridge.
Diego Costa
Shortly after Chelsea's 2-1 loss to Arsenal in the FA Cup final in late May, Blues striker Diego Costa declared to journalists in the bowels of Wembley Stadium that he would leave Chelsea only for Atletico Madrid. Since then, Costa has effectively been dictating the terms of his own departure.
Chelsea's leverage in talks with Atletico -- which were already complicated by the Spanish club's upheld transfer ban -- has been destroyed by Costa's disclosure of Chelsea manager Antonio Conte's infamous text message, and the relationship between the two men is damaged beyond repair.
Everyone knows Chelsea need to sell Costa to Atletico, and he has been left to party in his hometown of Lagarto in Brazil while Conte muddles through preseason without a replacement. The situation is an ugly mess.
Romelu Lukaku
The man identified by both Chelsea and Conte as first choice to replace Costa will be spearheading the Manchester United attack next season.
Lukaku appeared destined to be given a second chance to shine at Stamford Bridge, but Chelsea overestimated the Belgian's desire to play for them at the expense of all other options, and underestimated the productive and highly lucrative relationship agent Mino Raiola had forged with United.
Besides suffering a humiliating loss of face to one of their biggest rivals and manager Jose Mourinho, Chelsea have also wasted valuable negotiating time. Preseason has now begun, and whoever ends up arriving will have less time to acclimate to Conte and new teammates before the real football begins.
Lukaku, meanwhile, has all the opportunity he needs to hit the ground running with United.
Alvaro Morata
Operating at the top end of the transfer market means that in addition to pursuing pretty much whoever they want, Real Madrid almost always sell on their terms.
This makes them a very difficult negotiation partner, as both United and Chelsea have found in talks for Morata this summer. The only justification for Madrid's eye-watering asking price of £70 million, only a year after reclaiming him from Juventus at a cost of just £24m, is that his Premier League suitors can afford it.
Morata wants regular football and would like to play for Conte, but this may ultimately count for little. Madrid can afford to play hardball, confident that Chelsea's urgency will only grow and the 24-year-old, recently married and settled in the Spanish capital, will not seriously agitate to leave.
Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang
A little lower down Chelsea's list of Costa's potential replacements, Aubameyang would be an impressive consolation prize -- particularly given that Borussia Dortmund's reported asking price of £63m is considerably lower than other figures Chelsea have been quoted for strikers this summer.
Dortmund, however, are adamant that the time for Aubameyang's potential departure has passed. "We consider the transfer window closed," sporting director Hans-Joachim Watzke said Tuesday. "The timing [of it all] was decisive in the end."
Of course, the window is not actually closed for Dortmund or anyone else for several weeks. But it is rare for a big European club to U-turn on such a strong public pronouncement, particularly relating to such a key player.
Andrea Belotti
Speculation surrounding Belotti's future has intensified in recent days after he was absent from Torino's kit launch, and he has reportedly asked to be allowed to join a bigger club. But that may not be Chelsea.
AC Milan have also registered interest in Belotti and can offer the most exciting project in Serie A, having already added nine players to a talented young Italian core headlined by Gianluigi Donnarumma.
Torino's reported asking price of £80m for Belotti is beyond what Chelsea are willing to meet at this point in the window, though their mindset could change if Morata talks do not progress and Aubameyang remains off the table. By then, however, Milan might already have got their man.
Sergio Aguero
Chelsea passed on numerous opportunities to sign Aguero prior to his move from Atletico to Manchester City in the summer of 2011, but the Argentina international remains highly regarded by those in the corridors of power at Stamford Bridge.
City manager Pep Guardiola's cold treatment of Aguero, coupled with the arrival of Gabriel Jesus, has rightly raised questions about Aguero's long-term future in Manchester. Chelsea would certainly be interested in the 29-year-old if he becomes available, but there is no suggestion from the blue half of Manchester that this will happen.
Even if City decide that Aguero is expendable, it would be astonishing to the point of incomprehensible for them to give one of the world's most formidable goal scorers to one of their biggest Premier League rivals.