Major clue about Chelsea’s next transfer comes from top German insider | OneFootball

Chelsea’s busiest week of the window rolls on, and today there’s important news coming from RB Leipzig’s training camp.

The German side are in the process of selling Benjamin Sesko, with both Manchester United and Newcastle pushing hard for the striker, but also are locked in talks with Chelsea over Xavi Simons.

Winger left out of friendly squad as Chelsea close in

Xavi Simons left out of RB Leipzig squad.

Florian Plettenberg has been the first to note that both players have been left out of Leipzig’s squad to face Atalanta in a friendly today. That’s a sure sign that talks are pretty advanced.

Plettenberg describes it as an “imminent departure from Leipzig” and says that Chelsea “want to close the deal very soon.” A “new round of talks”, hopefully the final round, are “scheduled”.

Chelsea presumably want this all wrapped up so that Simons can make his move to London and start preparing for the Premier League, which starts in just 2 weeks time. The bulk of the squad are having their post Club World Cup holidays, but will start to return piecemeal from Monday. Ideally we want Simons integrating with them as much as possible.

Chelsea just one step from securing Simons

This deal feels pretty much done now – there may still be a few days of haggling, but with personal terms agreed it’s just a question batting some clauses back and forth with Leipzig. Chelsea also apparently want to sell (or at least get close to a sale) on some of their first team players. The good news on that front is that there’s some chatter about Christopher Nkunku going to Inter today.

There doesn’t seem to be a huge amount of competition for Simons’ signature, which is a real blessing when you consider the battle going on between Newcastle and Man U for Sesko.