Chelsea FC Transfer News: Blues Not Planning Midfield Reinforcements

With the news that Ramires will be out for a few weeks, there had been some speculation that Chelsea could dip into the transfer market in order to replace the Brazilian midfielder, who has emerged as one of the key members of the squad following an up-and-down first season with the Blues. However, it appears that the manager is happy with the midfield options available to him and has no intention of buying a replacement before Tuesday's deadline.

[Are we going to buy a replacement for Ramires?] I don't think so.

As you saw today, we used Flo (Malouda) in midfield, have Lamps (Frank Lampard) to return and (John) Obi Mikel to return. We have enough numbers to cope with it. If we add Flo to the midfield then even without Rami we have six midfield options and I think that is enough.

-Andre Villas-Boas. Source: Fulham & Hammersmith Chronicle.

I'm not sure this is the wisest course of action. Malouda is a midfielder like I'm a doughnut, and out of the remaining five in the senior team, only Michael Essien - who's just returned from his own serious knee injury - can claim to fulfill a role anything like Ramires. Essentially, we're going to be either relying on the Bison to provide that drive from midfield or we're going to be messing about with the awful Frank Lampard Raul Meireles partnership, neither of which are particularly appealing options.

That said, avoiding panic buys (cough Fernando Torres cough cough cough) is generally a good thing, and Ramires isn't going to be out for that long anyway. It's unclear at this point what the Blues are planning beyond the Kevin de Bruyne transfer, expected to be finalised today, but we'll keep you up to date with the news right here.