Now that the transfer window has closed, all the talk has become about players still at Chelsea rather than those who are coming or going.
Two who looked likely to leave late on were Marc Cucurella and Trevoh Chalobah. Neither has had much playing time through the opening weeks of the season and the club would happily have cashed in in either case.
Chalobah had strong interest from Bayern Munich and Nottingham Forest, while Cucurella came close to joining Manchester United on loan. In the end neither move happened, and both look set to be stuck on the bench for the season – or at least until January.
In his exclusive column on our sister site CaughtOffside, Fabrizio Romano denied that the pair would be “frozen out” by Pochettino, but confirmed new attempts would be made to move them on in January:
“For Chalobah there was an opportunity to join Bayern on Deadline Day, there was a negotiation with Chelsea and the two clubs were close to reaching an agreement, but then due to the different timing of the transfer windows in Germany and England, they were not able to reach an agreement on the salary and other details of the deal, so it collapsed,” Romano wrote.
“Chalobah wanted to go to Bayern, and this is why he rejected an offer from Nottingham Forest. They presented a very important proposal to Chelsea – £25m plus add-ons up to £30m, and Chelsea accepted that proposal, but Chalobah said no, he said he would prefer to stay at Chelsea. Tottenham were another possibility in the final hours of Deadline Day but never something concrete because they didn’t sell Eric Dier as they wanted to do in order to make room for Chalobah.
“So now in the last 24 hours we’re also hearing reports that Chalobah is out of the picture at Chelsea. From what I’m hearing, although it’s true that Chelsea accepted that proposal and wanted Chalobah to go to Forest, there is no formal communication from the club that Chalobah is not going to play for them again.
“Sources on the player side feel that the player expects to leave Chelsea in January – the feeling is that something will happen for them to part ways. Chalobah still wants to leave if there’s good opportunity like Bayern. But, to reiterate, there is no guarantee that Chalobah will not play for Chelsea.
“There was also something similar being reported about Marc Cucurella, but Chelsea deny players being frozen out. Again, the feeling is that both Chalobah and Cucurella are set to look for new clubs in January if they can’t play in the next months.”
It looks to be a wasted 6 months for both, but hopefully they can make a graceful exit come the New Year.
