Sarri expects Higuaín to stay at Chelsea next season

After possibly his worst showing yet for Chelsea today at Old Trafford, few, if any people are clamoring for Chelsea to extend Gonzalo Higuaín’s loan stay at Chelsea for next season — or, even worse, make him a permanent signing — but if Maurizio Sarri has his way, that apparently will be exactly the case.

“I don’t know [if he will be at Chelsea next season], I’m not in charge of the market so I cannot answer these questions. In theory, yes.”

In theory, this would require either a loophole in the transfer ban that would allow Chelsea to extend an already existing loan or would need a timely appeal to CAS to suspend the transfer ban. Chelsea are still working towards that second possibility and many expect that to be the case eventually. For now however, the transfer ban remains in place as all the fine print in FIFA’s regulations get parsed to see how it applies to Higuaín’s loan.

Of course, we could just prevent all this effort by agreeing that he hasn’t lived up to expectations. Not even close. But Sarri remains confident in his man, who needs that love and support to even have a chance of working properly once again.

“For a striker it is difficult to get used to the Premier League, for every striker, I remember Suarez at Liverpool in first season only scores three goals, then 16, then 24, but it’s difficult to adapt to this Premier League. I think in the next season he will be able to score a lot.”

-Maurizio Sarri; source: BBC

If Higuaín were half the player these days that Luis Suárez was back in the day, we might be on to something. Alas, he isn’t, and so we aren’t.