Chelsea used to be competing in battles for players with the top teams in Europe. Now it seems like we’re shopping in the same aisles as West Ham…
That’s the only conclusion you can make from the last 24 hours, where not one but two reported Blues targets were linked with the Hammers. First up there were reports yesterday that a £32m bid from our London rivals for Jhon Duran had been rejected. We were heavily linked with Duran in the early stages of the summer, and at one point a move seemed likely, but it never happened, and now it looks like we could miss out entirely.
It’s not just the Colombian striker, however. We’ve also got an exclusive report today from CaughtOffside which claims that West Ham are now the leaders in the race to sign Crysencio Sumerville, a player we’ve been linked to in our continued search to upgrade on the right wing.
“The Hammers are, according to sources close to CaughtOffside, actively working on the deal in question. Despite reports suggesting other Premier League outfits are involved (namely, Chelsea), Leeds United have still only received a convincing approach from the Hammers so far,” the report read.
So far this summer, despite accumulating further cheap squad filler and players to go on loan, Chelsea have not made much progress on big name signings to improve the first team. Their quite clear desires to sign a striker and a right winger have yet to be fulfilled.
West Ham another rising rival to Chelsea
West Ham’s sporting director is building a really impressive team, and with a quality coach in place they will be a side to watch out for this season, especially if they get these two deals over the line.
We’ve already got so many teams to worry about in the race for the top 4 – things could get even harder now.
Times gone past where the club owned would see the prospects needed and personally negotiate a deal with the player and his existing club
The current ownership buy and sell players of a lesser standard with the hope that the first team manager would create a ‘Star’ player
I suspect that they have reached their overdraft limit