The one problem Chelsea must avoid over £5m Jadon Sancho decision | OneFootball

Blues risk future issue if they do not pay get-out clause and make loan move from Manchester United permanent

Things have not gone according to plan for Chelsea or Jadon Sancho since his loan move to Stamford Bridge

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Phil Foden and Jarrod Bowen made a start apiece against Albania and Latvia without doing much to impress, while Eberechi Eze took advantage of a brief cameo to notch his first England goal.

Marcus Rashford started both games, trying hard without end product, the nagging suspicion that his recall to not only the squad, but the XI, might have been a fraction premature.

Of the wide players left out on form grounds, Jack Grealish was the most high-profile and Callum Hudson-Odoi perhaps the most unlucky. Some had even wanted to see Jamie Gittens, the young Borussia Dortmund winger, or Arsenal’s Ethan Nwaneri handed an early shot in the team.

Sancho risks being thrown into limbo once again

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And where in all this was Jadon Sancho, the man who blazed a trail for English prospects through Dortmund, and who beat Rashford in escaping his own Old Trafford nightmare on loan?

A million miles from contention, it seemed, and instead at the centre of a £5million debate, over whether Chelsea might stump up that sum to send the winger back on what, even by Avanti West Coast standards, would be a rather expensive return to Manchester this summer.

The sense out of Stamford Bridge is still that the intention is to sign Sancho permanently at the end of the season, for the fee of around £20-25m that was agreed when he joined the club on loan on deadline day last year.

That it is even a discussion, and that Chelsea’s get-out clause has become public knowledge, though, tells you that things have not gone according to plan - for the player or for either club involved.

Sancho, certainly, had no intention of returning to Old Trafford when he left last summer, set on reviving his career elsewhere having fallen out publicly with Erik Ten Hag.

The manager may have changed since, but Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s grumbles this month about still owing Dortmund money for Sancho does not suggest the rest of the United hierarchy would be ready to welcome him back with open arms.

“These are all things from the past, whether we like it or not, we’ve inherited those things and have to sort that out,” Ratcliffe said of a number of United players who were signed for significant fees to be paid in instalments.

Given Sancho’s contribution thus far, however, it would be almost a dereliction of duty on Chelsea's part not to be considering very seriously whether paying that £5m penalty might be in their best interests in the long run.

After a bright start of three assists in his first three league games, then goals in back-to-back wins over Southampton and Tottenham in December, Sancho’s form has dipped into a familiar tailspin.

He has not scored since and has laid on just one more assist, in the draw at Crystal Palace in January, all at a time when Enzo Maresca has been desperate for attacking output amid a spate of injuries.

There are a lot of moving parts in Chelsea’s wing considerations heading towards the summer window.

Mykhailo Mudryk’s future is still up in the air, with no news on his fate since he was provisionally suspended for failing a drugs test.

Joao Felix and Raheem Sterling are not in Maresca’s plans, but both are due back at the Bridge this summer, with no obligation-to-buy in either of their respective loans, at AC Milan and Arsenal.

Christopher Nkunku is expected to leave, but Chelsea are keen to sign both another striker and another winger.

And that is all before Estevao Willian, the hugely-rated Brazilian teenager, arrives from Palmeiras. It would be wrong to expect too much, too soon from an 18-year-old landing for the first time on English shores and the same will go for Geovany Quenda, the Portuguese sensation who will join from Sporting 12 months after that.

But nor, surely, would it be wise to risk a future logjam by committing now to yet another long contract for a player in Sancho who has had plenty of opportunity to earn it and so far failed to do so.

Chelsea are still counting the cost of the lucrative deal they handed Sterling, who still has another two seasons to run after this. Felix, meanwhile, is signed up until 2031.

And so the onus is on Sancho, who turned 25 on Tuesday, to string together a series of run-in performances to convince Chelsea and Maresca he is worth his place beyond the end of this campaign. Fail to do so and he risks being thrown into limbo once again.