Chelsea boss Lampard left with bloated squad as planned exits fail to materialise on transfer deadline day
BY PAUL LAGAN
Chelsea failed to shift surplus senior players as the transfer deadline ended on Monday leaving Frank Lampard with bloated squad..
Antonio Rudiger and Fikayo Tomori failed to move as the 11pm deadline approached, with Chelsea unable to reach a deal with Spurs for the Germany centre-half, while Fikayo halted his loan move to West Ham at the 11th hour.
Tiemoue Bakayoko has moved on again, this time to Napoli on loan for the remainder of the campaign.
New signing Malang Sarr, 21, was farmed out straight away – as expected – to Portuguese outfit Porto.
Other loan deals saw Marco van Ginkel return to PSV Eindhoven on loan.
It is the midfielder’s third spell with the club, having previously won two Eredivisie titles at PSV, in 2016 and 2018.
Two youngsters broadening their experience are Juan Castillo who has gone to AZ Alkmaar, and George McEachran has ended up at MVV Maastricht. Both have joined Dutch clubs on season-long loan deals.
It’s now international week for the men, but for the women it is back to WSL business on Sunday as the Blues take on title rivals Manchester City at Kingsmeadow. Chelsea struggled to find the net against lowly Birmingham on Sunday, winning 1-0 thanks to a rare header from Fran Kirby.
She said: “It’s not often I get a looping header.
“I’ve been working a lot in training on getting my jump better and getting myself more power to get off the floor, I was pretty lucky where the ball landed and I just wanted to be a bit of a nuisance in the box, to get to any second phases, any knock downs.
“I was in the right place at the right time.
“For us to score from a set piece is always nice. It’s something we work on in training. We focused a lot on keeping a clean sheet, to be solid, to be working on our transitions – when we lose the ball, how quickly can we get it back? We want to make sure we win every game, so we will set up in a way so that we can do that.
“But we know that we have to be really on it. And be ready again on Sunday against Manchester City.”
On Wednesday night, Chelsea thumped Arsenal 4-1 in the Continental Tyres Cup. Guru Reiten got two of the goals with Magdalena Eriksson and Beth England also on target.