“As soon as possible” – Romano gives update on Chelsea’s loanee who could replace Conor Gallagher

Fabrizio Romano has just put out his latest update on the situation of Andrey Santos.

The midfielder had a great 6 months on loan at Strasbourg, and now the decision of the summer is whether to send him back there, to send him somewhere else on loan, or to integrate him into the Chelsea squad next summer.

Romano says that decision will be made “as soon as possible”, with Enzo Maresca (who hasn’t even been officially announced yet) “involved”, as you’d hope.

There are other loanees with futures up in the air too – Romano name checks Omari Hutchinson as one of them.

There’s no doubt those players are pushing for first team minutes – but what will make things hard is the return to fitness of so many players who weren’t around this season. Maresca has a huge amount of work to do.

🔵🇧🇷 Chelsea will decide on Andrey Santos’ future for next season with Enzo Maresca as soon as possible.

Andrey had excellent loan spell under Patrick Vieira and now waiting for club’s decision.

Maresca will be involved in decisions on Omari Hutchinson, Andrey and more. pic.twitter.com/EchgFAu0bO

— Fabrizio Romano (@FabrizioRomano) May 29, 2024

The new coach in a tough position already

Decisions like this are exactly why it’s important to get the new coach in place right away, no matter who they are. Of course the new man is going to want to spent time with the players in preseason to decide what their future is in each individual case. But some decisions will have to be made before that – the future of players like Santos will be affected on what happens in terms of sales, and some of those sales need to happen before the 30th of June.

So Maresca and the sporting directors are actually going to be making decisions before he’s seen some of these players kick a ball live. For example if Conor Gallagher is sold, Santos is that much more likely to stay. If (as we assume is the plan) Gallagher is sold before the 30th June deadline, this will all be happening before Maresca has even got his feet under the table.