Chelsea accepted €45m bid for attacker last summer and now hope he can be one of 6 “marquee signings” | OneFootball

Ben Jacobs is already a useful mouthpiece for this current Chelsea ownership. Now it seems like he might be helping out some Saudi Arabian teams too.

Today he published a long thread all about the league’s plans for this summer, and it’s all desperately important for Chelsea, who will once again hope to rely on the league to bail out their past mistakes.

Jacobs’ long thread outlines the plans of the state-owned Saudi teams for the summer. There are plans for “5-6 marquee signings this summer,” with a budget of £2bn “allocated for transfer/agent fees plus wages.”

There are a number of players named as available. Manchester United are hoping to shift some big wages out there, with Casemiro and Raphael Varane both named. Chelsea had great success last summer, with both Kalidou Koulibaly, Edouard Mendy and N’Golo Kante going, and it sounds like they’re keen to repeat that.

It sounds like they almost did even better – Jacobs reports that they accepted a bid of €45m from Al Hilal for Romelu Lukaku, only for the striker to reject it.

A narrowing window

We won’t see the kind of spending we did in 2023 again it seems, and it’s clear that the majority of these Saudi teams will only look to add one or two stars a year now. Chelsea just have to try and make sure Lukaku is one of them.

After a middling season with Roma, his chances of playing top level Champions League football next season are shrinking, and Chelsea will be hoping that a similar offer to last year is this time more tempting for the Belgian. Jacobs says “several Saudi clubs are still keen” on the striker, and they know if they can get good money for him, that hugely opens up their options for buying players themselves.