Chelsea will recommence their season with an away fixture at Aston Villa exactly one week from today. It won’t be long now, but until we have football matches again, we still have plenty of transfer talk items to cover and analyze.
So let’s take a look at what the Chelsea related rumor mill is talking about in cyberspace on this Sunday. For our Chelsea restarted season preview and best potential starting XI go here. For today’s Chelsea news and notes go here.
We start with the latest on the pursuit of Kai Havertz, a derby that Chelsea are thought to be winning.
The Bayer Leverkusen forward won’t come cheap, as he’s wanted this summer by many of the biggest, richest clubs in the world. In order to finance the acquisition of Havertz, midfielder N’Golo Kante could be sold off to Real Madrid.
That’s the narrative according to Spanish outlet AS, who state the the Frenchman’s transfer market value as being around 80 million Euro. That seems a bit high, considering he’s 29 and enduring an injury plagued season, but at the end of the day, he’s probably the club’s best player and certainly one of the best midfielders in the world.
For Chelsea, this deal would perhaps be a chance to cash in on Kante while he’s still in his prime. That would help fund the makeover of the squad that manager Frank Lampard wants to do, with the club confident in the development of younger players like Billy Gilmour.
For Zinedine Zidane at Real Madrid, bringing in his countryman could be an alternative to his thwarted attempts to land another stellar French midfielder- Manchester United’s Paul Pogba.
Finally, we close on the latest name to get dropped in the search for a new left back. Layvin Kurzawa, 27, of Paris Saint-Germain is drawing interest from Chelsea, says the Daily Express. According to the report, Kurzawa has already held talks with both Chelsea and arch-rivals Arsenal, while turning down the chance to move to Inter Milan. The top target at the position of course remains Leicester City’s Ben Chilwell.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net, which is partnered with News Now. Banks, the author of “No, I Can’t Get You Free Tickets: Lessons Learned From a Life in the Sports Media Industry,” regularly contributes to WGN TV, Sports Illustrated, Chicago Now and SB Nation.
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