Chelsea kept their FA Cup dreams alive at the weekend with a comfortable victory over Morecambe in the third round of the competition, and as we now turn our attentions back to Premier League action, Renato Veiga is back in the headlines.
Given Chelsea’s incredible spending in the last few transfer windows, it is expected that we will see another couple of departures in January ahead of deadline day and despite only actually signing for the club in a £12 million deal from Basel over the summer, Veiga is again being linked with a departure.
The versatile 21 year old Portuguese international is well liked by manager Enzo Maresca, but his match minutes have been severely limited given the other options available to us. He has only started one Premier League game, with three starts coming in the domestic cups but he has been more of a regular in our Europa Conference League campaign.
Despite featuring at the weekend, reports are again doing the rounds with claims that Borussia Dortmund, Juventus and Napoli remain interested in his services, and some outlets are even suggesting that he has already agreed terms on a loan with the Bundesliga side.
A loan has not been agreed with Chelsea yet and it is not even clear if we have given any side permission to actually talk to him, as it is still believed that we are not interested in a loan arrangement but would entertain a full sale with us holding a £20 million plus valuation his head.
If a deal could be done in that region, it could make sense from our point of view as a clear £8 million profit in only six odd months would be good financial business depending on what our Financial Fair Play books actually look like, and given his game time so far a loan with a summer obligated buy clause may well be the way forward here.
It is already known that the player naturally has one eye on next summer’s World Cup so playing far more regular in the second half of the season would obviously boost his chances of being named in Portugal’s squad for the competition.
However, given his age and the fact that our gaffer likes him as an option in non league competitions, you would certainly think that we would be looking to move others on first and seeing Veiga depart would probably not be high on our list of priorities.
Fuelling the Dortmund links though would be their reported interest in out of favour Carny Chukwuemeka, and we might be more amenable to a double deal taking place if it helped move the former Aston Villa youngster on.
