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I expect Chelsea to be active in the January window, but also smart. The best news around Chelsea at the moment is that there is almost no news – finally. After two years of many rumours and stories about players, managers, directors, and so on, it’s important for things to now be a bit more calm and quiet.
This will help Chelsea work in the best way, and that’s what they’re doing behind the scenes, with a striker still their priority. We’ve heard a lot about Victor Osimhen and Ivan Toney, but I’m told that it still looks highly unlikely that Osimhen will leave Napoli in the middle of the season. Nothing has changed in terms of his availability because it looks like a complicated season for Napoli and so they want to keep him at least until the end of the season. In the summer of course it could be different.
For Toney, Brentford will fight to keep the player of course, but I’m told that he wants to try a new experience, and he wants to play for a top, top club. Chelsea are still interested, so let’s see if they will attack the situation, but there are no negotiations yet. Let’s see what happens because for sure they are considering bringing in a new striker in January.
In terms of centre-backs, I expect Chelsea to sell Trevoh Chalobah, it seems 99% likely because he wants to play football. Chelsea also believe that the best plan is to part ways in January. I have no update on clubs pursuing him yet, it’s no longer a concrete negotiation with Bayern after a deal collapsed back in August.
I would then expect Chelsea to try to bring in a new centre-back. They are exploring options on the market, but there is still nothing decided, they are still assessing options, but it’s certainly a position they want to cover in 2024.
From what I’m told, Romelu Lukaku has something like a release clause, but not a proper release clause. There is a gentleman’s agreement between the player’s agents and Chelsea, because they don’t want a situation like a few months ago in the summer transfer window when they had to negotiate with Juventus, then with Inter, then with Roma – it was a very complicated summer for Chelsea around the Lukaku story, and so there is now a…
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