Chelsea’s hopes of shifting expensive winger to Champions League rivals crushed by latest insider update

Chelsea are into the selling stage of their summer, and things are going pretty well so far.

Djordje Petrovic and Noni Madueke have both been sold for good fees in the last week, and a number of other players the club are keen to get rid of are generating some healthy interest.

Selling Sterling remains major priority for Chelsea

There is an elephant in the room however – Raheem Sterling.

He’s not in the picture at Chelsea at all – to the extent that he was frozen out all of last summer too – but his wages are really driving away any serious interest. Last year we had to resort to loaning him out to Arsenal, which was a good short term solution but has now left us back in the same situation as we were in a year ago.

There were whispers from the Athletic yesterday that two Champions League teams were interested in the winger, which got our hopes up a little. Later in the day those teams were reported to be Juventus and Bayer Leverkusen.

Leverkusen rumours shut down by insider

Well, we hope you didn’t get your hopes up too much. Florian Plettenberg has reported today that the rumours (at least those relating to Bayer Leverkusen) are “wide of the mark” and

Strangely Plettenberg decides to praise Sterling, calling him a “top” winger, but makes it very clear that Leverkusen wouldn’t be interested.

Sadly we feared that would be the case. The winger’s struggles at Chelsea then Arsenal, combined with his wages wages, are making him a very unattractive prospect it seems.

It seems like, once again, this is going to be a problem which hangs around all summer, and may not be resolved until deadline day. Go on Juventus, do us a favour…