Matt Law’s piece in the Daily Telegraph today comes hot on the heels of the news that Mateo Kovacic has agreed a deal to move to Manchester City for a fee that could rise to £30m.
Kai Havertz is also close to heading to Arsenal for around £65m. Kalidou Koulibaly and Hakim Ziyech will be the next out of the door, raising around £20m for the pair.
That puts Chelsea at £155m in terms of incoming cash from four players alone, and as Law points out, the Blues will be hoping to double that by the end of the summer. Mason Mount should fetch at least £50m on his own, and then it will come down to the smaller fees we can accumulate for the likes of Edouard Mendy, Callum Hudson-Odoi, Ruben Loftus-Cheek and Christian Pulisic.
Then there’s still potentially a really big earner out there if we find someone who wants to take Romelu Lukaku or Conor Gallagher.
Earning £200m in sales is no longer just hopeful, it’s looking pretty likely. That not only bails us out of a lot of last summer’s madness, it also gives us the breathing room to manoeuvre this summer. Not every player will need to be replaced (we are trying to reduce the squad size, after all) but some will.
Of course a major part of selling these players is the savings on wages, which in reality will be the great coup here, just as much as the headline figure of £200m made.
