Just because Chelsea might want to sign Ben Chilwell this January, or this coming summer, that doesn’t mean Leicester City will just simply hand him over to us. That might be obvious news to most, but you’ll have to suspend that bit of common sense for a second in order to make the Evening Standard’s story work.
They say that Chelsea “face fight” to sign the Foxes’ outstanding left back, who’s not only tied to the club through 2024 and has a hands-off price tag of £60m or so, but is apparently also in line for a payrise to “beyond £100,000 a week” and is “not agitating for a move”, especially to a team below his current team in the table. Basically, all the usual things that make transfers unlikely, or at very best, a complicated and drawn-out process.
Meanwhile, Lampard is apparently “relaxed” about the situation, even if the need to add a quality left back has remained apparent throughout the “fine start” to the season. He might not have much of a choice anyway, since CAS might not (probably will not?) lift the transfer ban for January — we won’t find out until mid-December in either case.
None of this will stop the Chilwell rumors however, so we’ve got that going for us, which is ... well, we’ll see if it’s nice or not. Maybe we’ll get lucky and this turns into another favorable £32m-for-Kanté situation.
Chelsea face fight to sign Ben Chilwell even if transfer ban is lifted https://t.co/SErITV0gI0
— Standard Sport (@standardsport) November 21, 2019