Chelsea announce sly transfer of left back from BlueCo partners in bizarre 6 week reversal | OneFootball

Amid the chaos last night it was reported that Ishe Samuels Smith, the defender Chelsea sold to sister club Strasbourg back in July, would be going on loan to Swansea.

That was a little curious, given he had just made the move, but given he wasn’t featuring in Ligue 1 for Liam Rosenior’s team, made sense from a player development and player trading point of view.

Chelsea have made secret left back signing

Ishe Samuels-Smith playing for Chelsea’s youth team. (Photo by Darren Walsh/Chelsea FC)

However, today’s news has revealed it’s all far stranger than it looked. It’s not Strasbourg loaning ISS to Swansea but in fact Chelsea. The Blues activated their buy-back clause to bring the left back back, then loaned him out to the Championship.

Strasbourg paid £6.5m for him originally, and we would imagine the buy back is the same – there’s no way we would have taken a loss just for 6 weeks.

So his association with Strasbourg is already over, as though it never happened. Ben Chilwell’s deadline day move to the Alsatians added another left back, so it does make sense from a development perspective to move the 19 year old elsewhere. There were also suggestions that he was homesick and struggling to settle in France.

BlueCo keeping teams operating in close alignment

What’s interesting about the whole thing is how much it shows BlueCo is being treated as one large pool of players. Chelsea were still concerned enough about Samuels-Smith’s development to sign him back and loan him, despite the fact he wasn’t actually their player at that point.

They clearly think there’s a lot more money to be made down the line on selling Ishe on again. A strong season in the Championship will do him wonders. Let’s hope all this fiddling about is worth it in the end.