Chelsea’s January window already looks bad in hindsight, and could get a lot worse.
Critically the Blues failed to strengthen their attacking options, and paid the price with their two strikers getting injured the very same day that the deadline arrived. To compound matters, one of their departures already looks like a disaster.
The Joao Felix debacle is reaching new levels of catastrophe. After taking him on loan, we still didn’t heed the warning and signed him for more than €45m last summer. 6 months later we were loaning him out to AC Milan, hoping they would sign him permanently in the summer – although we’ve always maintained that was unlikely given their finances.
There was a brief glimmer of hope after he scored on his debut, but since then he’s had his typical quiet spell, and he’s now started 6 games in a row for the Serie A giants without a goal or an assist.
The idea that they would pay anything close to what we did back in the summer is now impossible – so it’s either sell at a loss or loan him out for year after year while his value crashes.
Felix another black mark against sporting directors
Now all the talk in Italy has turned from them working out how to secure him permanently, to them not wanting him at all. CaughtOffside claim that “it is almost certain” that Felix will be back at Stamford Bridge this summer, with a manager who doesn’t want to use him and an ever growing list of failed spells at different clubs.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me, as they say. Those making the decisions at Chelsea seem to be getting fooled pretty regularly by Jorge Mendes at the moment.
