Celtic eye two Chelsea youngsters on loan — report

Charly Musonda Jr has been keeping busy playing for Chelsea’s U23 and U21 teams in various competitions, including the Premier League 2 (collected an assist in Sunday’s 5-0 win) and the Checkatrade Trophy (scored both goals in the 2-1 win), but none of these competitions offer anywhere near good enough challenge for him at this point. The kid needs a loan, or consistent playing time with the first-team but of those two options, only the former is possible right now.

He’s been linked with various Premier League teams (Bournemouth, Watford, West Brom, Newcastle) and second division Nottingham Forest as well, but if the Mail is to be believed, Scottish champions Celtic are also keeping a keen eye on the 21-year-old. In addition, Celtic “also like” Lewis Baker, who has yet to return from his loan at Middlesbrough, where he’s hardly played and is in real danger of undoing all the good development and progress he had made at Vitesse over the previous two seasons.

The Scottish Premier League isn’t exactly all that great, but minutes are minutes!

The Mail also mention that Celtic’s Moussa Dembélé, who had been linked with Chelsea off-and-on last year is possibly available for £25m (and that he’s not too interested in Brighton or Crystal Palace, because who would be). Considering that the he was previously rumored to be worth around £40m, Chelsea might want to take a second look even if the 21-year-old hasn’t set the goalscoring charts on fire yet this season (4 in 13 league games after netting 17 times last season, adding 5 more in the Champions League). Dembélé won’t ever be confused for an Andy Carroll-type target man, which is decidedly a good thing, but also possibly bad if that’s the type of striker Conte wants Chelsea to add.