Right through the team in every position there is clarity, focus and determination. Winning breeds confidence but it also brings with it distraction in the form of attention from other clubs.

Last month, Chelsea striker Diego Costa reportedly had his head turned by a £30 million-a-year offer to move to Chinese Super League side Tianjin Quanjian. The timing of the rumour, in the middle of the January transfer window, did Costa no favours as it coincided with the 28-year old having a disagreement with Chelsea fitness coach Julio Tous. As a consequence, Conte dropped Costa for the Blues' away league game with Leicester City.

Despite making a goal-scoring return to first team action against Hull City in Chelsea's next league match, Costa's future at Stamford Bridge continues to be shrouded in doubt, with former club Atletico Madrid making overtures once more about re-signing the player who made his name at the Vicente Calderon.

Right now, Conte needs Costa's goals to spearhead Chelsea's title challenge but the boss will already be planning ahead for next season, a campaign which whether the league is won or not will surely feature European football once more. Whether or not Costa, who is contracted to Chelsea until 2019, is part of those plans is one of the biggest questions in the game today and for now only Conte knows the answer.

Notwithstanding the £33m paid to Marseille for Michy Batshuayi, a fee which made the Belgium international Chelsea's second most expensive signing after £50m Fernando Torres, Conte's sparing use of the 23-year old even when Costa has been unavailable suggests the Italian's mind might be on another Belgian of similar age when it comes to strikers.

Last summer, Chelsea reportedly had a £58m bid for Romelu Lukaku rejected by Everton but in the wake of the prolific centre-forward's spectacular four-goal haul against Bournemouth last weekend, stories have resurfaced linking the player with a move back to Stamford Bridge. On a day when Costa blanked as Chelsea routed Arsenal 3-1, Lukaku's goals saw him leapfrog the Brazil-born Spain international to become the Premier League's leading marksman with 16 goals.

Lukaku's stats in the English top flight are compelling. To date, the Belgium international has featured in 172 games, scoring 76 goals. Prior to being sold to Everton in July 2014 during the ill-fated second reign of Jose Mourinho, Lukaku had already found the net 32 times in Premier League matches during loan stints with the Merseyside club and West Bromwich Albion.

Lukaku, who has spoken about having "unfinished business" at Stamford Bridge, has yet to sign a new Everton contract his agent Mino Raiola spoke of as being "99.9 percent done" in December. Irrespective of that piece of paperwork, the temptation of a return to SW6, the lure of Champions League football and a salary likely to be double the £100,000-a-week Everton are reported to be offering would make a move back to Chelsea a no-brainer for Lukaku.

Such is his form, the £70m price tag currently being touted could rise markedly if the striker continues to find the net for Everton and, injury permitting, there is no reason to suggest this might not happen.

Manchester United paid a world record fee of £89.3m to Juventus for the services of Paul Pogba. Chelsea could easily eclipse that if Conte persuades owner Roman Abramovich that Lukaku's goals could bring Champions League glory to Stamford Bridge once more. Having been money shy at the transfer table last summer, this time around Abramovich would not hesitate making funds available for the signing.

Cash is never generally an issue where the Russian in concerned, but it's worth highlighting that January's sales of Oscar to Shanghai SIPG and Patrick Bamford to Middlesbrough swelled Chelsea's coffers by £63m and the associated wage bill was also further reduced by moving John Obi Mikel on to Tianjin TEDA and Branislav Ivanovic to Zenit St Petersburg.

Simply speaking, even if Chelsea were to pay £100m for Lukaku, a player whom the London club returned a profit of at least £10m on when selling him to Everton, the deal for a world-class player with a minimum of eight years of his best football ahead of him wouldn't actually cost Abramovich that much.

It would be far outweighed by the long term benefits.