Chelsea confident of selling €27.5m midfielder – Premier League teams are best bet | OneFootball

We wrote about Matt Law’s thoughts on the London is Blue podcast over the weekend, where he talked about various players who Chelsea are trying to sell, including midfielder Lesley Ugochukwu.

Despite a real lack of rumours recently, the Telegraph writer is convinced that Chelsea are getting interest in the former Rennes man.

Chelsea “expect” sale of unwanted midfielder despite lack of rumours

Lesley Ugochukwu in action for Chelsea.

“I don’t have a club for you, but I’m told there’s an expectation that he will leave permanently,” Law said on the podcast.

“They expect to sell him rather than loan him, at this stage. That would mean that they must be in talks with clubs, I don’t have the name of the clubs but they think a sale is going to happen on Lesley.”

You can see Law speaking in the clip embedded here:

Premier League the most likely destination for Ugochukwu

While Law doesn’t have the names to hand, it’s pretty easy to speculate about what sort of clubs could be interested.

Chelsea paid an eye-watering €27.5m for the midfielder, and will want a similar sum back. They may be happy to take a smaller sum up front, but then ask for bonuses and sell-ons which at least potentially take the fee above what they paid.

Back in June we heard whispers about Valencia and Hamburg being interested. It’s hard to see either of them paying more than €15m for the midfielder – perhaps a loan with an option to buy is the best way for us to try to tgry

Premier League mid-table teams are likely our best shot for moving him on at a good price. While Southampton had a dreadful season and it wasn’t easy for him on loan there, he did show in some games that he’s got plenty of potential, and there’s always demand for athletic midfielders with quality on the ball and some experience in the top flight.