Home   >   News   >   Chelsea in for busy summer as Conte rebuilds

Chelsea in for busy summer as Conte rebuilds

By on May 19, 2016

The six years after Chelsea sacked Jose Mourinho for the first time were some of the most tumultuous in the club’s history. In that period, the Blues had six managers of six different nationalities and varying philosophies and only Carlo Ancelotti lasted more than a year. That is until Mourinho returned and heralded a period of relative stability for at least three more years.

Once again, however, Chelsea’s mirage of security was shattered by a volatile end to 2015 as Mourinho fell from glory and took many colleagues down with him. Now, Roman Abramovich has handed the keys over to Italian manager Antonio Conte, who will undoubtedly look to make numerous refurbishments over the summer in order to restore Chelsea’s place at the top of English football.

Specifically, the club are rumored to be in the market for a top striker. It has long been a foregone conclusion that they will sell Loïc Remy, who hasn’t started for the Blues since September, after repeated attempts to offload the forward in the January transfer window.

Nor will they renew terribly unsuccessful loan deals for Radamel Falcao and Alexandre Pato, who together have scored a resounding two league goals at Chelsea, leaving Diego Costa and Bertrand Traore alone up front.

Traore, though, is unproven on the elite stage and given Costa was also wildly inconsistent and volatile last season (there are already rumors that Atletico Madrid are trying to entice the Spaniard back to the Vicente Calderon), Chelsea are seeking to land a big-name forward to bolster their attacking force.

Top on their list is apparently Juventus’ Álvaro Morata, a key member of the Juve team that progressed to the Champions League final last year. En route to the final, Morata scored two goals to sink his former employers Real Madrid at the semi-final stage and bagged five in the knockout stages, a tally only bettered by Neymar.

The twenty-three-year-old has blossomed in Italy since joining from Madrid in 2014 and is expected to depart over the summer, with Madrid planning to exercise their £25 million buy-back clause and sell him on for a considerable profit. In that case, Chelsea would likely be competing with Manchester United, Paris Saint-Germain and Arsenal for Morata.

Romelu Lukaku is also being courted by Europe’s top clubs and Chelsea, never known to shy away from bold moves, are reportedly in the hunt for the target-man they sold to Everton just two years ago. The Belgian, however, commands a £65m valuation by Everton having scored twenty-eight goals in seventy-three appearances for the Toffees and becoming one of five players to score fifty Premier League goals before his twenty-third birthday.

He is also sought by PSG and United, according to Sky Sports, and is expected to be on the move before this summer’s European Championships.

Top football agent Jon Smith said he also expects a flurry of deals in the coming weeks in an interview with Sky.  Conte himself will take charge of Italy at the Euros, but has already begun to map out his plan for Chelsea.

Gonzalo Higuain and Edison Cavani are also on Chelsea’s radar, per multiple reports across Europe, and the club will also seek to sign another creative attacking midfielder to replace Cesc Fabregas and join the ranks of Willian, Oscar, Pedro and Eden Hazard. Juventus winger Kwando Asamoah, Roma’s Radja Nainggolan, and Santos’ Lucas Lima are likely candidates and following rumors that Borussia Dortmund’s Henrikh Mkhitaryan has denied a new contract from the German club, it appears that Chelsea are also eying the Armenian midfielder.

Leicester City’s N’Golo Kante, whose release clause of £20 million seems a steal after a blockbuster season with the Foxes, is another option to explore, although the Frenchman would be reluctant to leave the King Power Stadium. Tangentially, reports that Chelsea are interested in Kante’s Leicester Jamie Vardy have also died down since the winter.

Nevertheless, Chelsea are in for a whirlwind summer as Conte looks to reassemble the pieces of a Premier League winning team that was so painfully torn apart last season.

Photo credit: Clément Bucco-Lechat (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

About Alex Morgan

Alex Morgan, founder of Football Every Day, lives and breaths football from the West Coast of the United States in California. Aside from founding Football Every Day in January of 2013, Alex has also launched his own journalism career and hopes to help others do the same with FBED. He covers the San Jose Earthquakes as a beat reporter for QuakesTalk.com and his work has also been featured in the BBC's Match of the Day Magazine.