The irony is hard to miss on Chelsea's midfield issues. The club are struggling to efficiently use their best three players in the role with injuries and system problems making the centre of the park an elephant in the room.
Most of the attention this summer has been on repopulating the defence - understandably so - and overhauling the underperforming attack. Both issues are key and clearly look, on paper anyway, like the two most important places to address. But the midfield really isn't far behind that and with the end of the window approaching and no new concrete interest in buying another midfielder, Thomas Tuchel will have to juggle a lot of factors to keep his engine room firing throughout the season, at least until January.
With N'Golo Kante currently out and still being an injury risk in general, Mateo Kovacic has his own fitness problems and now Conor Gallagher looks unsuited to the role being asked of him. There's serious questions as to where Chelsea go from here.
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Tuchel has found his own answers in recent weeks. Experimenting more with flexible formations using four man defences and overloaded midfield systems with Ruben Loftus-Cheek adding valuable depth in that area too. How sustainable that is going forward remains to be seen.
The glaring issue, one that hasn't evaded Tuchel either, is the lack of defensive body in-front of the backline. It has made it tough to use a four man defence consistently and also means that physical and defensive weaknesses in the midfield are accounted for with an extra defender.
The ticket to solving this is through a new defensive midfielder but the options this late in the window are few and far between. The one choice that will always crop up is Declan Rice. The current West Ham captain was let go by Chelsea when he was just 14 and now the 23-year-old has 171 Premier League appearances with 32 England caps as well. He's one of the most established players in his position and fits the Chelsea squad perfectly.
He is also well known as being a great friend to Mason Mount and the Chelsea player opened up on his feelings when Rice was released from Cobham nearly 10 years go. "When Dec [Rice] went it was tough," Mount said to the Tubes and Ange Golf Life. "You know how close we are, but it kind of made me want to do it even more. I was gutted that he left and I felt like he shouldn’t have left. I just wanted to do it even more for him as well."
Chelsea have held a long-term interest in re-signing Rice. Frank Lampard was a big advocate for bringing the player in but Marina Granovskaia was less inclined to spend upwards of £60million at the time on a former academy player. Now Rice's value has more than doubled and any offer this summer would likely have to be well in excess of £100million to even start conversations, especially at this late stage.
Speaking earlier this year David Moyes was bullish of any interest in his player, saying: "If you are interested, well, it will be north of that. £100million was cheap last summer. £150million just now would be minimum but he is not for sale. What I do know is that it means there are only certain clubs that could even consider it.
"Look at what Tottenham did with Harry Kane, albeit in a different way. They said: 'No, there is a price and if someone wants to pay the price, then we would probably do it. If they don’t, then he’s not going anywhere' and they have kept him.
"There will be times when players have got the power but we have got Declan on the best part of a three-and-a-half-year year contract.
"What you need to say is it’s great credit to Declan. If you think of his development, from this time last year before the Euros to now, he’s been the best England player, most consistent England player. Declan needs applauding for how well he’s done, how he’s stepped up, how he’s tried to take his game to another level, add attacking to his play, get a few goals to his name.
"He plays in a style I think supporters of football at most clubs admire."
Since then Rice has become the full time captain of the Hammers and talk of a move away has been relatively low this summer. His contract will be in a precarious position next year though and will likely make him the centre of attention for plenty of clubs.
This isn't a surprise for Mount though, he added: "I knew the path he was going to go on and what type of person he is. I knew he was going to make it his own way. But it’s mad how the journey works."
If the pair can link up for club as well as country then Chelsea would be adding a vital cog to Tuchel's long-term midfield plan. Getting a deal done will be one to save for next summer though. This summer Chelsea have gone after Frenkie de Jong to fill the void. He offers flexibility in that position, being able to hold down a team and also act as a creative force moving forward. As neither deal looks likely though, it will be down to Tuchel to extract all he can from his current options.
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