Ornstein exclusive: Chelsea “contact” Leicester over midfielder who could cost €40m | OneFootball

David Ornstein has dropped an afternoon exclusive bomb which claims that Chelsea have contacted Leicester City on the subject of Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall, the midfielder who was a key part of their successful team under recently-appointed Chelsea coach Enzo Maresca.

Ornstein stresses that “no formal offer has been made yet”, but that the Blues would be the only club that could tempt the 25 year old to leave his boyhood club. He’s seen as the “perfect fit” for the style that Maresca wants to bring to Stamford Bridge.

Transfermarkt value him at €30m, and we’d expect that to be more like €40m or more when all is said and done, given he’s got 3 years left on his contract. As usual, Chelsea would probably offer a higher fee in return for being able to spread the cost out, and Leicester would be inclined to accept a good offer given they need to balance the books before the Premier League’s spending rules takes them to pieces.

Setting the scene for a departure?

Like most Chelsea fans, we’re pretty dismayed and confused by this news. We’ve got plenty of good central midfielders in a similar mould to Dewsbury-Hall already. Why are we now trying to sign him?

The unfortunate reality is that this likely indicates that one of them is going – and most people’s money would be on fan favourite Conor Gallagher, whose future has been in doubt pretty much since the day he broke into the team.

But even assuming Gallagher goes – is the rest of the group on the books not good enough? What’s the point in buying Cesare Casadei, Andrey Santos and Carney Chukwuemeka (to say nothing of the rest of them) if you’re never going to trust them in the first team? Is Romeo Lavia being replaced before he’s played a game? Is Lesley Ugochukwu now on the scrapheap?