Chelsea player sales will help with potential arrivals
Chelsea need/needed to sell a few before making offers themselves
Patience is a virtue they say, however, I can totally understand Chelsea fans current frustrations with a lack of any significant movements in the transfer market this summer so far.
When I say ‘movements’ I mean official bids, because believe me, there has been things going on behind the scenes, albeit not significant at the time of writing this.
As we keep saying on here, expect the unexpected with Chelsea as they operate behind closed doors. Nobody managed to get anything on Marc Guehi’s move to Crystal Palace until the day he was having a medical there. You know the details of this deal would have been being worked on for some time as it was complicated negotiating clauses etc, yet not one reporter or insider knew anything of it. So bear this in mind for potential arrival movements this summer as well.
Even still, I get the frustrations and if I’m honest, I too would have thought that we would have seen more significant movements from Chelsea right now.
However, I am lead to believe, and we have always said here and on our Podcasts, that Chelsea do need to sell players this summer before any official bids can come along.
Having said this, it is also about balance. For example, Tammy Abraham is wanted by a number of clubs this summer and Chelsea are open to selling him if a club offers up the £40m, but as of yet, there are no clubs putting that money on the table for him.
That doesn’t mean he is definitely staying, because as the window goes on we expect more offers and offers closer to Chelsea’s valuation to come in.
However, what this does do is cast a doubt over Chelsea signing a new striker themselves, for now only. Because if they cannot sell Abraham for a fee they are happy with, then they are hardly going to allow him to rot in the reserves next season and lose value completely.
So they do need a club to be at least quite far a long in a deal to sign Abraham this summer, before they put their official offer on the table for a new striker, which we are still being told Erling Haaland is the priority, despite getting negative noises out of Dortmund in reaction to Chelsea’s proposals to them so far. So it’s about balancing outgoings and arrivals together and in sync.
It’s not that Chelsea cannot afford to make signings without selling anyone, because they could, but that just wouldn’t be wise in a business sense, and Chelsea are a business at the end of the day that needs to balance the books.
On the plus side, Chelsea have now made just under £50m selling players so far this summer after Guehi’s move to Crystal Palace, so that is quite far along with player sales that the club want to make before smashing a load of money on a massive new striker signing.
I think we should start to see more players being sold and loaned out now in the next week or so, as well as significant movements to sign 1 or 2 new players now that the fees have started coming in for players sales and loan deals.
I’m not going to patronise you all and keep telling you to stay patient, I personally will just be holding out my final verdict and (hopefully not) frustrations on this window until it ends.
If you need more reassurance, check out these wise words on how things stand here from our guy Dan McCarthy.
Simon Phillips