Chelsea fans could be disappointed by €30m “cost-effective” solution the sporting directors plan in defence | OneFootball

Things change quickly in football.

Just a couple of weeks after it looked like Chelsea were going to secure their top defensive target Dean Huijsen, it now looks almost guaranteed they will miss out. The Athletic are today reporting that Real Madrid are set to trigger his £50m release clause, wrapping up an intense couple of days of rumours about how the Spanish club had surged back into the race to take advantage of the Spain international’s preference to play for them.

Chelsea forced back to square one after major defender shift

Mario Gila in action for Lazio. (Photo by Marco Rosi – SS Lazio/Getty Images)

That leaves Chelsea in a tricky position, back to square one after briefly probably believing they had their man. A lot of new targets are going to pop up now, to join the established names at the top of the list, Marc Guehi and Jorrel Hato.

Another one we’re starting to hear a lot is Mario Gila. The Lazio defender came through at Real Madrid, ironically, before moving to Serie A. He’s established himself there, and has a lot of top teams looking at him, including Chelsea.

Chelsea set for tough battle for “cost-effective” defender

Fraser Fletcher’s exclusive report for TeamTalk has some interesting details about how things might go. He says that Chelsea see Gila as a “cost-effective solution” (isn’t that what every fan wants to hear?), with Lazio valuing him at “over €30m”.

He also claims it won’t be a straightforward deal – Madrid have a sell on clause and Inter Milan are keen on the defender too. Given that, we can see the price getting significantly higher than €30m, especially if a bidding war develops. At 24, Gila is older than the majority of players we’ve targeted, but is still young enough we can imagine the sporting directors giving him the green light.