Chelsea will restart talks with Inter Milan this week over a proposed loan deal for Romelu Lukaku which will include an obligation for the Serie A club to buy the striker.
The Blues rejected Inter’s opening loan offer for Lukaku two weeks ago, insisting they only want to sell him.
Inter are now willing to include an obligation to buy Lukaku so Chelsea can earn a fee at the end of a loan spell, which would permanently end his £97.5million Stamford Bridge nightmare.
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The move could be attractive to Chelsea depending on the price. It would allow Inter, who have financial problems, to spread the cost of signing Lukaku over two summers.
Lukaku wants to leave Chelsea but only for Inter and the 29-year-old has rejected two offers from Saudi Arabian club Al-Hilal, who were ready to pay Chelsea a substantial fee.
The downside of accepting Lukaku’s wishes would be that he would take up one of seven outgoing loan spots, as FIFA impose strict new limits on the number of players a can have out on loan at one time.
Chelsea ideally want to avoid loaning senior players out so they can maximise “development loans” to help their younger stars.
Carney Chukwuemeka, David Datro Fofana, Gabriel Slonina, Omari Hutchinson, Tino Anjorin and Andrey Santos could all take up the remaining spots.
Chelsea are, however, happy with the progress they have made selling players this summer, with Mateo Kovacic and Kalidou Koulibaly already joining Manchester City and Al-Hilal.
Kai Havertz is finalising a £65m move to Arsenal, while Edouard Mendy and Hakim Ziyech are completing moves to Saudi Arabia and AC Milan have agreed an £18m fee to sign Ruben Loftus-Cheek.
Chelsea’s co-sporting directors Paul Winstanley and Laurence Stewart will have soon helped raise over £150m in player sales and they feel ahead of schedule on their mission to slim down the Chelsea squad to a more manageable number for new head coach Mauricio Pochettino.
They feared it might take three transfer windows to make such progress but now think they can complete process in a single summer.
Part of their reluctance to loan players out at this stage of the summer is also to be able to offer wantaway senior players extra options at the end of the window.
