Chelsea in familiar position as Paris Saint-Germain swoop for Leandro Paredes

Paris Saint-Germain could be swooping in for Chelsea transfer target Leandro Paredes. The Blues have been down this road so many times they must be the only people who didn’t see this coming.

Done deals just ain’t what they used to be. Correction: all but done deals. Chelsea’s pursuit of midfielders Leandro Paredes and Nicolo Barella were presented as all but done deals, with the Blues simply needing Maurizio Sarri to choose one or flip a coin to determine who would replace Cesc Fabregas. Instead, the usual combination of complacency, sloth, hype, hubris and Enron-level management – that is to say, the Chelsea Way – may find Paredes signing with Paris Saint-Germain and Barella happily remaining at Cagliari.

That would leave Chelsea with two options. First, they could have no ready back-up to Jorginho, who would play all games except for (maybe) the next few rounds of the FA Cup. Second, the club could make a deadline day signing of someone who may not even have a YouTube highlight compilation set to non-offensive, royalty-free EDM.

Paris Saint-Germain have supposedly bid £30-35 million for Paredes, at least £5 million more than Chelsea were willing to pay. Any bid by PSG, though, will put them ahead of the Blues, who may not have made any formal approaches to Zenit Saint Petersburg for the midfielder. Given Chelsea’s record of parsimony and apathy towards anyone not affiliated with Napoli between 2015-2018, PSG’s bid will almost certainly remove the Blues from contention. Zenit will benefit from a bidding war that PSG ended as quickly as they started it.

As my colleague Scott Brant said last week, Chelsea are taking all the fun and excitement out of the transfer market by taking all the ambition out of it.

"If Manchester City is that shopper who grabs whatever they want off the shelves, Chelsea are the mother with nine kids, clipping coupons, getting to the checkout and putting products back when they see how much things cost."

Whatever level of agreement Chelsea reached with Zenit for Paredes or with Cagliari for Barella was put on hold while the Blues worked to complete the Gonzalo Higuain transfer. Perhaps they wanted to see how much they would have to pay for Higuain in order to know how much they had left to spend on a midfielder. Or they felt Higuain was a higher priority.

If the latter, their thought process is faulty along every dimension. As much as Chelsea fans and Maurizio Sarri don’t want to admit it, the Blues have three strikers available this spring: Alvaro Morata, Olivier Giroud and Michy Batshuayi. Against the right opponents and with the right training for the wingers and attacking midfielder to know when and how to cover, they also have the option of playing Eden Hazard as the false-nine.

They have no such depth for at playmaker. With Cesc Fabregas gone, they have Jorginho. Ethan Ampadu seemed like a potential candidate to deputize Jorginho if necessary, given his play last season at Chelsea and for Wales. However, Maurizio Sarri views him as long-term depth as centre-back rather than an immediate possibility for midfielder.

This implies, then, that Maurizio Sarri’s personal preferences prevailed over the objective needs of the squad. He does not want the three strikers he has and Higuain is a long-time favourite. Even though three (strikers) is bigger than one (midfielder), satisfying his striker desires became more important than satisfying the midfield needs.

The one potential bright side is, by not signing Paredes or Barella, Chelsea keep the way clear for Mason Mount. However, that is shaping up to be an accidental consequence, not the intent of this action. Chelsea are not choosing to forego a short-term solution at midfield to preserve an in-house, homegrown long-term option. PSG are making the decisions for them. We’re not like the seal-clappers on ChelsTwit. We can’t get too excited anymore about Chelsea tripping over their failures into secondary positives.

Once again, the whole situation comes back to the lack of a technical director. Aside from aggressively pushing deals over the line, a technical director would tell the coach “You can’t ask me to marginalize three strikers so you can get the one you want” – assuming a technical director would even assent to that one – “while leaving you with no one to back up the player we bought for you this summer.” The technical director would staff a full squad and, with the backing of the owner, tell the coach: Those are your players. Get to work. We’ll talk in the summer.

Maurizio Sarri will be more than happy to have Jorginho play the rest of four competitions this season. Hopefully he will stay healthy. It’s one thing to have a No. 10 slot in as a false-nine. No one other than Sarri devotees are interested in finding out what a false-five looks like.

Is Mikel John Obi still available?