EXCL: Saudi our lucky penny, Foot down on Mount decision, Mike Maignan is top of the top, Transfer priorities, Chelsea fans will love Strasbourg - very nice food and Beers!
The Frank Leboeuf Chelsea FC column!
Chelsea have been super busy with sales these last couple of weeks and we are starting to see many good deals get confirmed now.
I would have never thought that Chelsea would have found a solution and a way to sell so many players. Saudi Arabia has become the lucky penny for Chelsea! I’m pleased for the players who really wanted to go there, players over 30 and nearing the end of their careers, and also making some room in the Chelsea squad, which was badly needed.
Kalidou Koulibaly, Edouard Mendy, N’Golo Kante (as free agent), Hakim Ziyech all going there, it’s fantastic for the club to get some money out of it even if it’s not the money that they have invested in the players. They can at least get some money out of transfers where we might have thought that either the player would have been stuck at Chelsea, or they would have just been loaned, or sold for almost nothing. We are also getting their wages off the books, it’s great.
Some of them had some bad performances last season so it’s a good thing to be able to sell them, and it’s a good thing for Chelsea. The players who have gone are so far the players we wanted to see gone. They were struggling, so it’s good for the club to get these sales done.
In all the rumoured sales, I think maybe Mateo Kovacic is the only one who could have stayed, it would have been nice to keep him. But for him, I understand that he wants to go to Manchester City. If he has a chance to play, that’s the other thing. They’re also talking about Declan Rice there, where you already have John Stones, Rodri, it might be complicated for him to play much more than 30 games a season, but that’s his own business. For Chelsea, I would have liked him to stay because we might only have Enzo Fernandez staying there at this rate with all the sales! It was already an issue last season with injuries and being short in there. But we also know that Chelsea will be buying new players there in the coming weeks, so it’s something they will resolve.
On transfers this summer, we need to prioritise a goalkeeper, a midfielder, and a striker. We have to resolve the problem of the spine of the team. We need to secure the middle of the park, the back, and the striker. That’s the biggest work we have to achieve very quickly because it’s not possible to start the season wondering who is going to score goals, and who is going to stop the goals.
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