Chelsea have agreed a deal for defender Ian Maatsen to join Burnley on loan, with a £31.5m obligation to buy included in the deal.
Matt Law’s exclusive in the Telegraph says that the young Dutchman will rejoin the team where he had so much success on loan last season in the Championship. The fact that the Clarets are willing to spend so much money on the 21 year old is testament to how good they think he is.
Breaking: #Chelsea have agreed a deal to loan left-back Ian Maatsen to Burnley with an obligation to buy him in a deal worth £31.5million including add-ons.
(via @Matt_Law_DT) pic.twitter.com/OEN9wubgaC
— Talk Chelsea (@talkchelsea) September 1, 2023
The vast cash spent on Marc Cucurella a year ago was not just a total waste of resources, it’s quite clearly having a brutal knock on effect here. Our inability to shift a useless player now means we’re forced to sell a good (and home grown) one.
Our spending has consequences, and while we can certainly hope for better results in the future, so far we’ve seen more depressing departures than we have seen good performances to compensate for them.
Chelsea have agreed a deal for Ian Maatsen to join Burnley but the player is reluctant to leave.
— Jacob Steinberg (@JacobSteinberg) September 1, 2023
There could be further twists today however – Jacob Steinberg is reporting that Maatsen is “reluctant to leave”, despite Chelsea clearly wanting him out. We have no idea how this plays out in the next 8 hours, but it could get very spicy.
Oh for goodness sake! Enough of the moaning “I want my cake and eat it too” crybaby crap from supporters like SuperFrank is one of the reasons we’re in this mess. The impatience is juvenile and the analysis that the product on the field hasn’t been better is also nonsense.
We’re in a rebuild and “building” (by definition) takes time. If you want something slapdash then you get what we’ve had for years now—a very expensive assemblage of players bought under numerous different managers who fit no one vision. But some of us would rather see the club invest in a plan and actually stick with it long enough to see it through. We might not win every game right away (neither did Arteta or Guardiola and look at them now!), but this is about achieving long-term excellence and you don’t do that without making tough decisions and overcoming some obstacles (and, yes, selling some promising players in order to bring MORE promising players that fit your vision/needs.