It’s been a very busy few days in the transfer market for Chelsea following the conclusion of the World Cup, but the wheeling and dealing should continue long and hard for a while yet, as we still have plenty of players on the books who need their futures figured out.
Among the more prominent of them are Nicolas Jackson, Axel Disasi, and Marc Guiu, all of whom are in the shop window, or at least nearby. Certainly, Disasi is posed there strong and proud (again). Jackson may yet be reintegrated with
the first-team (he’s set to join up for the preseason tour starting this weekend), but Guiu has been completely forgotten and erased from the collective consciousness apparently.
Guiu saw barely 600 minutes of action all season following his emergency recall from Sunderland at the very end of last summer’s transfer window, making just one Premier League appearance in the final five months of the season. The 20-year-old is “definitely” leaving, at least on loan, but maybe more definitively if someone were to offer £25m, as per The Athletic. That seems wildly optimistic for a player who joined us in a £5m transfer two years prior, but has done little to justify a five-fold valuation increase — regardless of pedigree or promise.
Even without Guiu, we have more strikers than we know what to do with, including returning loanee Nicolas Jackson, who failed to impress enough at Bayern Munich to prompt a permanent stay. He’s back and set to maybe get his spot back, too, but he also remains transfer-listed at £65m. That may sound like a lot, too, but it’s a significant discount on last summer’s £100m asking price. Aston Villa have been linked, but I’m not sure we greased them enough with the Morgan Rogers fee for both Alejandro Garnacho and Jackson to go the other way (even if Garnacho is just a loan initially).
Lastly for this roundup we have Bomb Squad OG Axel Disasi, who’s back once again, this time from a loan at West Ham United, whom he couldn’t save from relegation. Word is that he might have been kept for good had West Ham stayed up, but they didn’t, so he hadn’t. The 28-year-old still has three (3!) years remaining on his Chelsea contract, so we could do this song and dance many more times over if we can’t figure out a permanent move. Dropping the asking price from the reported £25m might be needed in order to accomplish that, especially as rumored interest in him so far has come mostly from just the Italian Serie A.
All of these asking prices seem way too high to me, though in fairness, BlueCo have managed to pull off some decent outgoing deals despite our propensity to overspend otherwise.
