Chelsea ‘still hopeful’ of agreeing temporary contracts with Willian, Pedro on deadline day — report

Welcome to deadline day! No, not transfer deadline day, but short-term temporary contract extension deadline day. Doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.

Nonetheless, it’s an important day for a couple Chelsea players, namely Willian and Pedro, whose contracts expire in exactly one week. Back in May, the Premier League set today, June 23, as the deadline for clubs to agree temporary contract extensions with players on expiring contracts.

While clubs could agree normal extensions with the players afterwards, the temporary contract possibility will not be valid after today.

But even though it’s become more and more likely that neither Willian nor Pedro would want to risk injury just to play out the season with Chelsea — Pedro has reportedly already agreed his next move, with AS Roma, while Willian’s still searching — according to the Telegraph’s Matt Law, Chelsea are still “hopeful” of successfully convincing the veteran wingers to stay and play for another month.

Talks will apparently continue today, though we don’t have much time left. Willian played almost the entire game on Sunday and has been one of the most used attacking players all season, while Pedro was pressed into action just before the pandemic struck, so they both could yet play a crucial role in this season’s run-in (neither Hakim Ziyech nor Timo Werner can play until next season).