Taison signs for Shakhtar Donetsk

If you were worried about Taison possibly coming to Chelsea, you can now relax (if you were excited by the prospect of Taison coming to Chelsea, you're weird). The Metalist Kharkiv attacking midfield, whom reports had repeatedly linked with the Blues, will be staying in Ukraine, having signed with our good friends Shakhtar Donetsk for $20 million.

A possible Taison acquisition never made much sense for us, because despite being a pretty decent attacking midfielder he'd be nowhere near the starting eleven in a 4-2-3-1 and he's not the centre forward we so obviously needed before the window despite ostensibly being able to play up front.

At this point I'd bet he was some sort of backup plan should the Demba Ba pursuit have fallen on its face, but since it didn't I think everyone's happy to let him go to Shakhtar rather than shell out eight figures for a player we didn't really need. That money would be better spent on a midfielder, and hopefully Chelsea know that.