Chelsea could get discount on £90m defender by sending academy star the other way | OneFootball

Chelsea’s mad four windows of spending are over – we expect this upcoming January to be much quieter, and that to be the case going forward.

The squad has been refreshed, the average age and the wage bill brought down, and there’s plenty of raw materials for Enzo Maresca to work with. But like any good team there will need to be constant patches and tweaks applied, and at the moment the obvious area that the sporting directors will be targeting is at the back.

This team is scoring a lot but conceding too many, and there’s a very tempting idea that bringing in a dominant central defender would help with that. We’re not surprised that links to all manner of top options fill the rumour columns every week, and one name that won’t stop coming up is ex-Chelsea boy Marc Guehi.

Marc Guehi playing for Crystal Palace.

Chelsea could end Chalobah the other way to make Guehi deal doable

TeamTalk today report the Cobham product, who left the club in 2021, could make a return as his current team Crystal Palace look to cash in on him.

He’s now established as an England regular, and is a classy player with tons of Premier League experience. Levi Colwill and Wesley Fofana are our current first choice pair, and Guehi fits nicely in their mould, making him a perfect option to add to the mix.

That would likely then mean the departure of Axel Disasi, Benoit Badiashile or Tosin Adarabioyo, but not many fans would have much of a problem with that – Guehi looks an upgrade on all of them.

Palace took Trevoh Chalobah on loan from Chelsea in the summer, and could make that deal permanent to cancel out the loss of Guehi. The Eagles wanted £90m for Guehi in the summer, and this report says they’d now take a lower fee, with his contract now 18 months from expiring.