Chelsea will not buy back Jérémie Boga, negotiating sell-on fee instead — report

Chelsea’s search for attacking talent to add to the club will most likely involve overlooking the prospect of buying back former youth standout Jérémie Boga, according to Fabrizio Romano writing for The Guardian. Instead, Chelsea are said to be negotiating a sell-on clause with Sassuolo, ahead of the 23-year-old’s expected departure this summer.

Boga’s 10 direct goal contributions in just 25 appearances this season have certainly attracted a number of suitors, with Napoli head coach Gennaro Gattuso reportedly the most keen admirer of all. Chelsea seem to be well aware of this and are looking to make some profit.

(Ed.note: while we could do this ourselves by exercising Boga’s €15m buy-back clause and then selling him ourselves, this way probably involves less effort even if we lose out on a few million. Replacing the buy-back with a sell-on only makes financial sense if we think Boga’s price won’t go above the €15-20m range. Otherwise the sell-on would have to be very high to break even versus simply buying him back and selling him ourselves, but I digress.)

As good as Boga’s been since joining Sassuolo, Chelsea appear fixated on players with a much higher pedigree who would immediately improve the attack. Lampard has enough young players already in need of polishing. Jadon Sancho, Moussa Dembél´, Philippe Coutinho and recently Kai Havertz have been some of the high profile targets rumoured to be on the Chelsea radar, which would make Boga’s return to the club almost an impossibility.

Looks like Jérémie Boga’s 18-minute cameo on the opening day of the 2017-18 Premier League season will prove to be his one and only contribution to the Chelsea first-team ... at least for the foreseeable future.

(Ed.note: sad.)