I know that some of you have been worrying about Kakuta's future as his contract is set to expire in the summer and there had previously been no news at all regarding talks of an extension. The youngster is widely regarded as one of the top attacking prospects in the game and is one of the jewels of Chelsea's youth movement, featuring intermittently for the first squad this season at just 19 years of age. After the controversy involved in bringing Kakuta to the club - the transfer from Lens very nearly caused Chelsea to be banned from engaging in transfers for two years - it was surprising that the team wasn't making more visible efforts to keep him. However, that seems to have changed.
The Daily Mail is reporting that Kakuta has been excused from international duty (the U-21s play a friendly against domestic outfit Orleans today) in order to return to London for talks with the team. While the Mail is portraying this as 'thrashing out a contract', French source L'Equipe is more circumspect, merely referring to 'contract talks', but either way it's hard to portray this as anything but good news. Hopefully we'll hear more soon.