The majority of European windows closed on Saturday night, but a few of the more rogue ones stayed open, and given the number of players still kicking around at Cobham without any prospects of playing in the first team, that’s a fact that could come in very handy for Chelsea.
The first issue is that none of the top 5 leagues still have their window open – but Portugal and Greece are close enough.
One player now being strongly linked with a move to the latter is David Datro Fofana. Nizaar Kinsella of the BBC is today coming in strong with new links between the striker and AEK Athens. Poor Fofana has been training all summer without so much as a whisper of a rumour about him potentially finding a new club.
Deadline day moves to Sunderland and Hoffenheim apparently fell through, seemingly now leaving him with a choice between Greece or 6 months training with the youth team.
AEK “have an interest” in signing the striker, and Kinsella notes that their sporting director Panagiotis Kone was at Stamford Bridge on Sunday. Fofana might not be the only one who ends up making the move. Olympiakos owner Evangelos Marinakis was also at the game against Crystal Palace, and we’d be very surprised if we didn’t see some kind of movement towards a Greek club before too long.
Chelsea could send multiple players down emergency routes on loan
Fofana isn’t the only player who might potentially have to take a move to Greece or another lesser league. With the majority of windows now shut, the likes of Angelo Gabriel, Deivid Washington and Alex Matos are all still looking for a move.
Ben Chilwell is one of the highest paid players in the squad, currently also frozen out. Can we really see him dropping his demands and going to a second tier league?