Every January has its transfer saga, you just don’t know who it is right away.
There have been a few candidates at Chelsea this month – but over the last week it’s become clear that Mathys Tel will be the focus of the end of this window for the Blues and a few other Premier League teams.
We were initially told Bayern Munich winger was happy to stay and wait for his chance to play in Bavaria. But 3 games on the bench without a minute on the pitch seemed to have changed his mind, and the winds started to blow in a different direction earlier this week. Bayern have confirmed themselves that the 19 year old wants out.
Since then, things have moved quickly. A number of Premier League teams have lined up as suitors for the Frenchman. Chelsea were dealt a stinging blow by the word that he didn’t fancy a most to Stamford Bridge, seeing other projects as superior. As recently as yesterday morning Bild were reporting that Tel didn’t want a Chelsea move because he’d face the same struggle for minutes as he does in Munich.
Chelsea persist despite negative rumours

That would be fair enough – but there’s now optimism that Tel is more open minded than we might have suspected. Matt Law, who is well connected on the Chelsea side of things, says that the club “aren’t put off” by those reports.
Told Chelsea not currently put off by reports of Tel supposedly favouring alternative moves or being concerned about playing time. That hadn’t been directly communicated to #cfc yesterday. https://t.co/nMyNSboCVn
— Matt Law (@Matt_Law_DT) January 30, 2025
Those concerns “hadn’t been communicated to Chelsea yesterday,” meaning that while they still may be true, the club are proceeding with their attempts to sign Tel until they hear directly from him he’s not interested. The fact that hasn’t happened yet can only be a good thing.
This saga is going down to the wire, it seems.