Mohamed Salah might factor into Chelsea's pursuit of Baba Rahman

As if the Mohamed Salah soap opera hasn't yet claimed enough lives, here he is again, stirring the pot and potentially complicating things.

Roma is also interested in Salah, the Italian club is waiting for Chelsea's answer, Mourinho's club would like to sell him outright or do a loan with forced option to buy. Another factor is Baba's situation, Augsburg's winger has an agreement with Chelsea but he's waiting to see if Roma wants to sign him, but they would only bring him in if Salah won't arrive because they don't want to use all of their non EU slots.

-source: Gianluca Di Marzio

The EU slots consideration is new to me, but if any part of the Baba Rahman deal hinges on Mohamed Salah, I'd say we put the winger on the first fast train to Italy.  Don't worry about packing; we'll send your stuff after you.  And by winger I mean Salah, not Baba.  I'm not quite sure why David Amoyal calls the Augsburg man a winger.

In any case, we might have to act fast to push Salah onto Roma with Inter Milan still circling as well.

"[Jovetic] can play any role across the attack, main striker, second striker and winger in a front-three. Salah can also play multiple roles, as he did in Florence. That said, one of them is at City, one of them is half way between Chelsea and Fiorentina. I don't want to offend anyone."

-Roberto Mancini; source: Express

Salah is a clear surplus to requirements at this point.  With Filipe Luis halfway out the door, we need to buy a full back and the 21-year-old Baba Rahman could solve that problem in both the short-term as a backup and the long-term as an eventual starter.  But if the young left back's transfer is being held up by Roma, who in turn are being held up by Salah, then we need to be proactive and set the dominoes in motion by pushing the first one over and out the door.