The transfer deadline has crept up and is just around the corner, leaving Chelsea with just over one week to get all of their business over the line and concluded. The Blues have already made a number of additions, with Raheem Sterling, Kalidou Koulibaly and Marc Cucurella all joining the first-team fold.
Young trio Gabriel Slonina, Carney Chukwuemeka and Cesare Casadei have all joined too, with a view to building a promising future at the club. Despite that business being done already, it seems as though there's plenty more to come over the remaining week of transfer action.
One key area is that of the defence, with a lack of options at Thomas Tuchel's disposal. This is only further exacerbated by the loss of Koulibaly to suspension, with the coach asked if it would impact his signings: "I don't know. We need to wait.
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"The transfer period is still open. It gets later and later, and we need to focus on what we have and what we can do. We can obviously play at a high level, but we lost track when there was no need."
With the potential need for other centre-back options, Leicester City defender Wesley Fofana has been linked with a move to Stamford Bridge. With that said, football.london takes a look at the current state of play surrounding a switch for the Frenchman.
football.london understands that a third bid is still expected to be lodged by Chelsea for Fofana - who has asked to leave Leicester - with the Foxes requesting a world record bid for a defender to allow him to leave. That would mean a valuation set at over £80million, a record held by Leicester's Harry Maguire joining Manchester United.
Transfer guru Fabrizio Romano has reported that a move is only reliant on an agreement between the two clubs in the remaining week. That's because personal terms have been settled upon, with a six-year deal on the table for the 21-year-old with Chelsea.
While manager Brendan Rodgers came out with a staunch "not for sale" stance and confirmed rejected bids for the defender, but that appears to have softened over recent weeks. The young centre-back didn't feature for the side in their 2-1 loss to Southampton at the weekend, being omitted from the matchday squad.
Discussing the decision with NBC Sports Soccer, he said: "I mentioned in the week about coming into a Premier League game and maybe one or two players not being in the right frame of mind, you can’t carry them and certainly we can’t. So that’s the reason for the change.”
It remains to be seen whether a deal will get over the line in time for the Blues, however time is ticking down on landing one of the biggest young talents in the Premier League this summer.
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