There are two things going on in parallel right now. On the one hand Chelsea are desperately chasing a central midfielder to replace the gap left by the departures of Jorginho, N’Golo Kante, Mateo Kovacic and Ruben Lofus-Cheek from their team.
Names like Romeo Lavia (19) and Moises Caicedo (21) are being mentioned.
Meanwhile the Blues have 3 extremely talented players in similar positions of a similar age already on the books. Cesare Casadei (20) is crushing the U20 World Cup in Argentine, Andrey Santos is earning Brazil caps at 19 years old, and Carney Chukwuemeka was considered one of the best young central midfielder in England before his move to Chelsea last summer.
Now we don’t expect Pochettino to tell the club to forget about signing a new midfielder, but he will without question use at least one of these guys in his first team squad next season to fill some of the gaps.
Who will it be? Well Chukwuemeka has already had a wasted year at the club, so we suspect he will be the one loaned out to guarantee he plays plenty of games in the next 12 months. Casadei looks brilliant but is perhaps more attacking minded than what the Blues need in the first team squad, and also has the least experience in senior football.
That leaves Santos, who is experienced, talented and plays with a solid defensive style that would really improve a flimsy part of the team.
