Chelsea

Chelsea

Premier League • England

Chelsea readying five-man swap deal for deadly Serie A striker Pochettino ‘insists’ on taking

Dusan Vlahovic and Rafael Leao

Chelsea have reportedly offered five star players to Juventus in order to allow the Blues to take Dusan Vlahovic off their hands.

The Blues look unlikely to step back from their gung-ho transfer policy this summer. For the last two windows, their plan of action has seemingly been to sign every player they want, no matter the cost.

That saw them spend more than £500million in those two windows. While that’s obviously a huge amount of money, they seem ready to do it all over again this summer.

Indeed, a number of star signings in a lot of different positions have been mooted. One of the main areas they seem to improve is up top.

It’s little surprise they’d want to see some improvement in the striker position, given their joint-top scorers – Kai Havertz and Raheem Sterling – scored nine goals each, and the next best tally was Joao Felix’s four, which was achieved in half a season.

Victor Osimhen is one of the main names they’ve been looking at after a phenomenal season which helped Napoli win Serie A. However, they’ve apparently ended their pursuit, as they weren’t ready to pay £150million.

Another Serie A star they’ve been looking at is Juventus’ Vlahovic.

He’s seemingly captivated those at the club, with a recent report stating Chelsea ‘insist’ on having him, and are ready to throw some players at the Old Lady to make the transfer happen.

Chelsea offer five stars in return for Vlahovic

Italian outlet Gazzetta dello Sport has offered an update on that. Indeed, they report the Blues have offered five stars to Juventus in return for Vlahovic.

They name the stars, who are: Trevoh Chalobah, Ruben Loftus-Cheek, Christian Pulisic, Kalidou Koulibaly and Romelu Lukaku.

Juve are looking for in the region of £68million, which is around what they paid for Vlahovic. Lukaku alone was worth more than that when he returned to Stamford Bridge from Inter Milan, but his value will have dropped in the last couple of years.

Still, their package might be worth more than the Juve striker, so it wouldn’t be a surprise to see them snap Chelsea’s hand off.

Swap deal makes sense for Blues

A swap deal makes a lot of sense for Chelsea for a lot of reasons. After their massive outlays in the last couple of windows, they’ll need to sell to ensure they’re complying with Financial FairPlay regulations.

However, they clearly still want to recruit, after a very poor season in which they finished 12th.

With that being said, getting wages off the books while not having to pay anything for an expensive asset is an ideal workaround for them.

Obviously, it means they’d be getting a very good player for no cost, too. And a lot of the players they’ve offered to Juve are ones that would have likely been leaving soon anyway.

As such, it seems like a win-win situation for them, which will see them take a deadly striker who they’ll hope can have a massive impact.

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