Chelsea ‘expect’ CAS to reduce the transfer ban, allow January signings — report

It’s a weekend international break rumor special from the Mirror, so take it with all the grains of salt you can find in your immediate vicinity, but apparently Chelsea “have alerted leading agents that they expect to be back in transfer business in the January window”.

Or, to put it another way, Chelsea expect CAS to cut in half the two-window transfer ban, which Chelsea appealed but began serving this summer.

Big if true.

What the rumor does have going for it is that it fits into the speculative narrative established earlier this summer, when it became clear that while Chelsea were appealing the ban with CAS after the FIFA Appeals Committee agreed with the original decision, we did not submit the additional appeal to have the ban frozen this summer. The idea (or at least the hope) was that by accepting the ban, showing good citizenship, and beginning to serve it straight away, we could possibly get CAS to cut it in half and allow the team to make new signings in January — and if not, we’d take this season on the chin with good feels and youthful verve (which is exactly what we’re doing so far).

Should CAS in fact reduce the ban — there’s no timeline on when they might render a decision — expect Crystal Palace’s Wilfried Zaha to be one of the first rumors to pop up.