Why Chelsea are lining up to sell yet another player just 6 months after buying them

Amougou was always intended to be a project – the idea was to bring him in and get him used to the club before sending him out on loan this season. Clearly there hasn’t been much interest, or Chelsea have simply decided he isn’t the player they thought they were getting.

With Habib Diarra having moved to Sunderland and Andrey Santos returned to Chelsea, Strasbourg are certainly short in midfield and could do with another body, even in the inexperienced form of Amougou.

Chelsea get into the weed with loan – transfer fiddle

This will be painted as Chelsea giving up on a player just a few months, but in reality it’s more of a squad balancing trick.

Instead of using up a foreign loan slot and one of our three slots at Strasbourg, we simply sell him with a loan back.

Still, there’s no denying this was a silly way to operate things. He should have been signed for Strasbourg in January, he could have played games there and already started building his value and his career. Chelsea could still have bought him from there if he continued to improve.

There may be some accounting reason for doing it this way round which escapes us, but we would imagine he’s just not proved to be as close to being ready to play Premier League football on loan as was hoped, and this is just a convenient way out.