Chelsea’s sporting directors had a lot of work to get through this summer. For every player they bought they had to sell one – and they certainly like buying players.
A lot of the “bomb squad” who had trained apart from the main group were shifted by the end of the window, leaving just a handful of players in the awkward situation of having been deliberately excluded from the first team, but not able to find anywhere to play this season.
The most high profile – and certainly the most highly paid – was Ben Chilwell. He’s seemingly started a little reintegration into the main group, and there were photos of him smiling with manager Enzo Maresca in training this week. But that doesn’t mean he’s sticking around long term – quite the opposite in fact.
Romano’s latest update makes January seem very close
Top insider Fabrizio Romano has given an update on Chilwell to CaughtOffside as part of his Daily Briefing column.
“Chilwell is back with the Chelsea squad now for sure. Still, I don’t think he’s going to have a lot of space as Veiga and Cucurella remain main options at left-back, but he will fight for his place,” Romano explained.
“For January, the expectation is still for Chilwell to look for a move somewhere else.”
So the priority is still to shift the England international and his massive £200,000 a week wages, and even if we see him get a few cameos when injuries really start to bite, we shouldn’t get too excited.