Chelsea In Contract Negotiations With 4 Players

News! About Chelsea players rather than the CPO and a stadium move! Hurray! According to Andre Villas-Boas' press conference ahead of the Chelsea-Everton game this weekend, the Blues are in contract negotiations with four players - Didier Drogba, Nicolas Anelka, Salomon Kalou and Jose Bosingwa.

While most of the attention is going to be focused on the third player in that list on account of his abysmal start to the 2011/12 season, it's Anelka who's far more interesting - he's made it pretty clear several times that his intention is to leave Stamford Bridge at the end of his current contract, which expires this summer. It's therefore a bit of a shock to hear Chelsea talking about negotiations, although it has to be said that since nobody's going to tell us how advanced they are this doesn't mean a deal is anywhere near finished.

That, obviously, goes for Kalou as well, and while the Ivorian is hardly a popular figure amongst the fans at the moment it's important to remember that he has a very impressive scoring record, even in important situations. He's scored 54 goals for the club in 146 appearance (many of them off the bench) and should probably be considered an average Premier League player. That, of course, doesn't mean the Blues shouldn't be looking to sell, but negotiations here don't preclude selling him in, say, January, and could well be a pretext for it.

So, all in all, nothing really new save for the Anelka tidbit. That's something to keep an eye on, but I would still expect Nico to be on his way out this summer.