Chelsea can cash in on Real mess over Robinho

"But we know that if Ronaldo had been signed from Manchester United then Robinho would have been dumped and that's a poor show."

Chelsea are also looking to take advantage of Robinho's dissatisfaction at having his demands for a pay rise at the Bernabeu dismissed out of hand.

Ribeiro is pushing for a salary of £4m before tax per season but the club have offered £2m a year.

Although the money is spectacular by any normal standards, Robinho can legitimately point out that several of his team-mates, including Raul, Guti, former United star Ruud Van Nistelrooy and Iker Casillas earn between £4m-£6m per season and the Brazilian has been a key figure in each of the last two title victories won by Real Madrid.

And the fact that Brazil started their Olympic football campaign without Robinho is another sore point helping Chelsea.

Madrid refused the player permission to join Dunga's squad in Beijing and he played 45 minutes as 10-man Madrid secured a 2-1 victory against Independiente de Santa Fe in Colombia last night.

Inevitably, the embarrassment which Madrid feel over their humiliating failure to buy Ronaldo means that they will be reluctant to be seen to sell a footballer who is adored by the Bernabeu faithful and, at best, Chelsea's bid would need to increase by well over £10m in order to tempt the Spanish champions, who would then be left scouring the transfer market at the last minute for a replacement.

New Chelsea boss Luiz Phil Scolari is desperate to land his fellow countryman and is keen to recruit another striker before the start of the season.

Nicolas Anelka has been in stunning form in pre-season - he scored four goals in last week's 5-0 win over AC Milan - but Didier Drogba has been struggling with a knee injury.

The I vory Coast striker has returned to light training but is unlikely to feature in Chelsea's first match of the season, against Portsmouth on 17 August.

Andriy Shevchenko is now seen as surplus to requirements and Saloman Kalou is not thought to feature in Scolari's long-term plans either. Thus the Brazilian is going to need extra firepower if he wants to play with two strikers in attack in the coming season, something the boss has been working on in training.

Meanwhile, Jose Bosingwa is also back in training following a thigh problem.

The defender is not expected to start against Porstmouth either, but is on course to feature before the end of the month.

Bosingwa, who suffered his injury just 19 minutes into his first game as a Chelsea player in the friendly match against Guangzhou two weeks ago, is expected to resume full training next week.