Chelsea ‘ready to offer 18-month deal’ to Edinson Cavani despite Lampard denials — report

Edinson Cavani wants out from PSG, and he’s gone as far as to submit a transfer request, even. Transfer requests can be denied of course — we did just that this time last year with Callum Hudson-Odoi — and he’s reportedly worth more to PSG as a backup option than as a transfer fee, but it does show that Cavani is willing to forgo any bonuses or severance payments just to get himself into a better sporting situation than the one in which he currently finds himself.

While the 32-year-old striker has been most strongly linked with Atlético Madrid, whose rejected bids have been the primary catalyst behind the request, he’s also been linked quite reasonably with Manchester United, who will be without Marcus Rashford for a while and Tottenham Hotspur, who have been once again deprived of Harry Kane. Recently, Chelsea have popped up as well, a little less reasonably.

Cavani has more frequent flier miles in the Chelsea rumor mill than most — since 2012, at least — but the Times want us to believe that this time could the real thing, with Chelsea apparently “ready to offer” an 18-month deal to a striker in a similar situation to Olivier Giroud’s. If you squint hard enough, that might just pass the club’s over-30 contract guidelines, but no amount of squinting can make PSG’s supposed £23m asking price look any less ridiculous than it does.

And while Lampard has hinted that both long-term and short-term options could be considered in this transfer window as we look to fix our woes in front of (the oppositon) goal, in Friday’s press conferece, he’s also specifically played down any interest in Cavani.

“There’s nothing absolutely imminent. We’re looking but there’s nothing to tell you that might happen right away. Cavani is a great player. I played against him and always loved his mentality and attitude, and obviously his goalscoring record speaks for itself. I’m not aware of his situation so we’ll see.

“He’s an experienced player but so are many other players out there. We are young as a squad and we know about the transition so the idea of bringing in experience is something I’m certainly not looking absolutely away from because sometimes the younger players need a bit of help and that may help us.

“Long-term in January is very difficult so short-term is something we would look at because there are issues that are pressing for this season and for us now to finish where we want to get to. It’s something that we are looking at.”

-Frank Lampard; source: Chelsea FC

Long-time readers of this blog might recall that Cavani has always been one of our favorite transfer targets, but at just a few weeks shy of his 33rd birthday, that ship has surely sailed a long time ago. However, we do have a strong recent history of short-term veteran signings, especially at center forward (Falcao, Pato, Higuaín, Eto’o, Drogba, just to name a few, for better or worse), so we probably can’t rule this out just yet.