The international break is a nice chance for players to speak to the media in their own countries, and we always get some good stories out of it.

Today we’ve heard from a non-Chelsea player about how close he came to joining the Blues the summer before last. Edson Alvarez was a player we were linked with heavily, and according to him, we came even closer to signing him than we had suspected:

“In year three [at Ajax], I had to go to Chelsea, the plane was waiting for me at the airport – then Ajax told me, ‘You know what: you’re not going’,” Alvarez explained in quotes picked up by the Daily Mirror.

“Ajax told me: ‘You’re not going’. So, you’re not leaving, what do you do? There’s no way you’re leaving.”

We wonder how different things would have been had that deal gone through. We would never have bought Romeo Lavia a year later, and perhaps even our pursuit of Moises Caicedo would have gone down a different path.

Alvarez looks a really good player, and has settled in nicely as Declan Rice’s replacement at West Ham. He’s not got the potential of a player like Lavia, but would have contributed a lot to this Chelsea team over the last 18 months.