A report tonight from Sky Sports, BREAKING of course, claims that Kurt Zouma is set for talks with both Stoke City and West Brom tomorrow regarding a potential loan move. This follow weeks of speculation that has had the big man linked to various loan moves around Europe, including France (Marseille, Nice, Lyon) and Spain (Valencia, Sevilla) and probably a few others as well that I don’t recall at the moment.
Chelsea centre back Kurt Zouma due to have talks tomorrow with Stoke and West Brom about a loan move
— Kaveh Solhekol (@SkyKaveh) July 11, 2017
BREAKING: @ChelseaFC defender @KurtZouma due to have talks tomorrow with @stokecity and @WBA ahead of potential loan move. #SSNHQ pic.twitter.com/Y6hM5DkDyW
— Sky Sports News HQ (@SkySportsNewsHQ) July 11, 2017
Throughout the past few weeks, amid all the loan speculation, Zouma has been quite adamant about staying with Chelsea this season and fighting for his place. But if he is indeed due for actual talks tomorrow, it probably does mean that he’s finally given in and has seen the benefit of going out on loan — i.e. it’s not the end of his Chelsea career, but with five center backs ahead of him in the pecking order at the moment (Azpilicueta, Cahill, Christensen, David Luiz, and the new man Rudiger), he’s unlikely to get much playing time at Chelsea next season. And above all, he needs playing time to properly rehab his ACL injury and at least get back to the level he was at before blowing out his knee last year (and ideally improve on it).
A Premier League loan would probably be a greatly beneficial move for him. He could certainly learn a thing or two from Tony Pulis at West Brom.